Old, brittle, yellowed pages from 1869 bearing the times of Up and Down trains have been restored painstakingly and rebound.
Vintage timetables of the then Eastern India Railway, published annually, contained not merely the departure and arrival times of the trains but also detailed information of make-up times, engine restrictions, permissible speed, watering stations and other information.
There are four kinds of timetables. A working timetable for railway employees, a suburban timetable for EMU trains, a zonal timetable and Train at a Glance, which is the timetable for the traveller.
The working timetable contained information on make-up time (the time needed to make up for any delay), engine restrictions (listing restrictions on the running of engines), watering stations and speed restrictions, among other aspects of running of trains.
Eastern Railway, along with Intach Calcutta, took the initiative to restore the timetables. They were lying in a state of disintegration at the office of the principal chief operations manager, U.K. Bal, at Fairlie Place.
Bal appointed Intach to restore a timetable from 1903.
A restored, rebound timetable Telegraph picture
“When Intach finished the job, I gave them five more time tables, from 1869, 1891, 1906, 1917 and 1948, which were historically significant,” said Bal. The 1869 time table is the oldest time table with the Eastern Railway.
The 1891 timetable was the first to be published after the passing of the Railway Act of 1889. The 1906 timetable was published a year after the Bengal Partition and the 1917 one came out after the end of World War I, when the railway was reorganised.
A restored, rebound timetable Telegraph picture
The 1948 timetable was the first timetable of independent India.
Senior restorer Subhas Chandra Baral of Intach Calcutta worked on the timetables for six months. “We fumigated the timetables and then dry brushed them. They were then tested for acidity, de-acidified by the aqueous method, lined with tissue to increase the paper strength, flattened and cut to size before being re-stitched,” said Baral.
As for the maintenance of the restored timetables, G.M. Kapur of Intach said: “They are now kept in a separate cupboard at Fairlie Place. They need to be kept dust free and fumigated at periodic intervals.”