Balurghat, March 29: A train halted tonight some 23 km from here, at Rampur, for the first time since Independence.

Trains stopped chugging through this north Bengal district after the creation of East Pakistan in 1947. The tracks from Sealdah fell within East Pakistan. The nearest station, Hili, 26 km from here, became part of a new nation overnight.

Balurghat has not seen a rail engine since. It will have to wait till tomorrow morning.

Though the run is a technical check with the engine carrying the machine to detect flaws on the tracks, excitement is hanging heavy in the air.

“This is like history being created. I had never thought that the people of South Dinajpur would be able to make a train ride without travelling 110 km to Malda, the nearest railhead,” said Dipankar Banerjee, a former chairman of the municipality here.

Since Independence, people of the district have been clamouring for an extension of the railway line from Eklakhi in Malda to Balurghat in South Dinajpur. The demand was finally heard when A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury was sworn in as railway minister in 1982.

With a minister at the Centre from neighbouring Malda, fresh petitions were sent by South Dinajpur residents in another attempt to get the district connected by rail with the rest of the country.

The 1982-’83 railway budget featured the Eklakhi-Balurghat broad-gauge project. But soon after Ghani Khan lost his portfolio, funds for the 87.7-km track shrank. The Rs 20.9-crore project ended up costing over Rs 200 crore. Over the past two decades, measly sums — from a few lakhs down to Rs 1,000 — were allotted for the project in the rail budget.

This morning, thousands thronged the new station to watch the engine pull up. But they soon went away as word came that the engine was progressing slowly as technicians were making adjustments to the tracks on their way up.

Railway sources said technical checks with stone-laden goods trains would continue for some time. Passenger trains would follow.