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As the latter half of the 19th century became a world on the move, an enterprising new generation of Indian travellers boarded trains; in the process, they had to adjust to a faster pace of life and a changed visual economy. Relative speed limited opportunities to observe closely nature and the countryside; as the network of rivers, pathways, dirt tracks, and later pucca roads shared space with the new symbol of imperial progress, passengers had less time and occasion to observe the world that now sped by. Reminiscing about his childhood in Rambles in India: During Twenty-four Years, 1871-1895, the civil servant-cum-historian, R.C. Dutt, wrote about those “happy pre-railway days when a journey from District to District was performed by palki or boat... though one travelled less one saw more of the country... more villages, bazaars, and towns, the rivers, ghats and temples”. Many, however, would have been happy to trade in visual pleasures for speed, the likes of Fanny Parks being surely among them: had she visited India a couple of decades later, she would perhaps have been one of the first women to board a railway carriage, choosing it over the slower pace of the boat, pony cart and palanquin.
Deliberations around the introduction of railways in India had lasted 10 years, covering several pages of correspondence and documentation, often tiresome in their prolixity. Finally, on April 16, 1853 at 3:35 pm, as three locomotives named variously Sindh, Sultan and Sahib hauled 14 passenger coaches out of a modest structure at Bori Bunder (today’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) in Bombay, the city was linked to Thana (Thane), 21 miles or 34 kilometres away. This was the first section of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR).
More than a year later, in February 1855, a carriage rolled out of what was then Howrah Station, a motley collection of huts and sheds, to the coalfields of Ranigunge. Madras Presidency inaugurated the Madras Railway the following year and the city was linked to Arcot, 63 miles away. By 1868, the GIPR was on its way to Delhi, and had reached Jubbulpore; the Bengal-Nagpur Railway (BNR) inched towards Nagpur, and Sholapur, about 150 miles beyond Poona, was connected, ushering travellers in the direction of Madras and south India.
Though in the long run the railways greatly benefited the local population, the initial days were terrifying for many: normally a callous observer of the hapless ‘native’, the photographer, Samuel Bourne, who traversed north India by train in the 1860s, could not help but have some sympathy for those for whom the train was “an incarnation of the devil” — petrified villagers ran helter-skelter as they “beheld the flying engine with its mighty rattle” furrowing “through their peaceful territory”. In no time, though, not only did the train radicalize travel but also the railway system soon became a way of life, an employer and a rich source for real and fictional adventures and fantasies. The more enterprising were prepared to try their hand at what was on offer, and in the late 1850s, the otherwise feckless Prandhan Banerjee, nephew of the kulin widow, Nistarini Debi, enrolled in a nine-month course to learn telegraphic morse transmission for use in the railways. He was soon employed at Halisahar. In Sekeley Katha, her dictated autobiography, Nistarini, who was living with Prandhan at the time, writes of fearful days in the rest room in the makeshift station, surrounded by semi-jungle and the local drunks.
Things were a bit better for Jim Corbett, just out of school in the 1890s. He was employed as fuel inspector with the railways on Rs 100 a month. Clearly his job description was a euphemism, as he had to live in the forests of modern-day Bihar, supervising as well as cutting hundreds of cubic feet of timber to be used as fuel by the locomotives. When, 18 months later, coal was introduced (and the trees spared), Jim became a general dogsbody, “at times on the footplates of locomotives”, driving engines and even filling in as a guard for goods trains. Stories of a pristine integrity and loyalty are narrated with meticulous Corbettian detail: a railway sweeper who rescues a suitcase full of jewels, Christmas celebrated without any thought for caste or religion and the frontiers of life extended amidst these looming symbols of a new era.
From the point of view of governance, the railways made relocation of troops, equipment and the general paraphernalia of the raj easier — as was evident during the troubled years of 1857-58. However, it had not been an easy time for those in charge of bringing railways to India. High levels of morbidity and mortality affected workforces, with malaria and cholera being almost endemic. The timely delivery of supplies depended on shipments from Britain — and here too, at least one per cent of vessels were lost at sea. Bridge designs and the wood for sleepers (oblong pieces of wood used as a base for railroad tracks) varied from region to region. The first railway bridge was built over Thane Creek in 1854 and the building of bridges, tunnels, railway crossings and stations required skill, innovation and a formidable stretch to what was possible. Bridge engineers had to work out how to build structures on surfaces that may actually be silt for almost a hundred feet; then there was the question of keeping the river under the bridge even when it changed course, to say nothing of the surging monsoons that threatened many a bank. Despite all these travails, hardy railway bridges have invariably survived and many of them are still in use. Though fewer in number, tunnels involved far greater ingenuity and, often, the supervision of experienced British tunnellers. Normally constructed in hazardous sites, specially trained workers were required, and though blasting and excavation were not unknown to Indian workers, safety conditions were not optimal.
Unique were the hill railways — the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway and the Kalka-Simla Railway with its rail cars are well-known; both were nothing short of engineering marvels at the time. Though much shorter than these two, the 20-kilometre long Matheran Light Railway (photograph) that links the hill station to Neral, midway on the Mumbai-Pune route of the Central Railway, goes through a much more tortuous route. It was not built by the British but was an unusual enterprise for an Indian business czar, Sir Adamjee Peerbhoy, a wealthy cotton merchant. His son, Abdul Hussain, convinced the Dawoodi Bohra entrepreneur — he was a major supplier of canvas tents to the British army — to support this venture. The Peerbhoys had been frequent visitors to the small hill station of Matheran which was, as the crow flies, a mere 30 miles east of Bombay. However, it was not easy to get to and initially, Sir Adamjee had a kutcha road carved out of the hillside to connect Neral to Matheran. It was used by enthusiastic trekkers, those on horseback and of course by palki-borne visitors.
Better connectivity was clearly in order, and after his father gave him the green signal, Abdul Hussain utilized the expertise of a Punjabi engineer to survey the area for the laying of the railway track. In 1904, Hussain camped at Neral — to plan and supervise the work that started on his pet scheme; the two feet gauge line running over a distance of 12 miles — and travelling at the same speed as it climbed almost 3000 feet — was opened to traffic in 1907. The project that had cost Rs 16 lakh — a huge sum in those days — was completed in 14 months, a record of sorts. Though the line was washed away in the 2005 floods, it was quickly restored by the Indian Railways; and they wasted little time in getting the Matheran Light Railway placed on the list for consideration as a World Heritage Site at UNESCO’s 2010 meeting. If selected, it will be no mean tribute to the tenacity and spirit of adventure of an early Indian entrepreneur who thought fit to gain a spot — albeit tiny — in the country’s British-dominated railway system.
