There is an entity known as Asia Pacific Heritage and Tourist Rail Organisation (APHTRO). It is a cross-country forum, within that specific geographical region, where one exchanges information, experiences and ideas about preserving heritage railways and museums. APHTRO organises annual conferences and for the first time, such an annual conference was held in India, specifically, Delhi, at National Railway Museum (October 19-21, 2016). A few months ago, if you visited the heritage website of Indian Railways (IR), it mentioned Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) and nothing else. Today, this website has improved enormously and states, “Indian Railways with more than 160 years of rich history presents a wide spectrum of both tangible and intangible heritage. The repository of railway heritage is not limited to its world heritage inscriptions, but much beyond.” The tangible bits are locomotives, coaches, wagons, equipment, artefacts, bridges and so on. But there are also intangible bits, like skills and techniques. For instance, the following wouldn’t have immediately occurred to me. “At times, it becomes really impossible to locate an artisan who can do valve setting of a steam locomotive or a carpenter who can precisely fix the door of wooden body saloon.” As most people know, IR has four Unesco World Heritage Sites — DHR, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Kalka Shimla Railway and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
Some of the stuff is in railway museums and heritage galleries/parks. There are 34 of these and three more are being developed. However, some of the stuff, like bridges, tunnels and viaducts, can’t be in museums and galleries. Thanks to the improved website, and more importantly, better stock-taking of inventory, we have a list of 25 such bridges, tunnels and viaducts. The one that fascinates me is described as Bridge No. 8 (Jubilee Bridge) between Hooghly Ghat and Garifa Stations, across the River Hooghly. This belongs to Eastern Railway (ER). When private companies developed railways, initially, the demarcation between East Bengal Railway Company (EBRC) and East Indian Railway Company (EIRC) was River Hooghly. EBRC was supposed to operate on the eastern side of the river and EIRC on the western side. Before it was taken over in 1884, EBRC built the Calcutta-Kushtia line in 1862. Once it was taken over, EBRC became the East Bengal State Railway. One of the remarkable feats, which linked what was happening on the east of Hooghly with what was happening on its west, was the linking of EBRC’s lines with those of the EIRC. This happened when Jubilee Bridge, linking Bandel and Naihati, was opened in 1887, the construction having taken five years. This cantilever bridge was called the Jubilee Bridge because it was opened to coincide with Queen Victoria’s silver jubilee coronation celebrations.
This Jubilee Bridge was decommissioned in April 2016, after 129 years. It was unnecessary. A New Jubilee Bridge, which runs right next to the Old Jubilee Bridge, has been inaugurated in 2016. What happens to the Old Bridge? I understand it is going to be auctioned as scrap, for the steel. I am no railway engineer. But my impression about the old Jubilee Bridge is it was unique not because of the steel, but because of cast-iron bearings that moved like pendulums on mercury. Once the mercury dried up, the bearings and the bridge were doomed. Something like the Old Jubilee Bridge, even if it were to be saved, can’t be preserved in museums and galleries, though bits and pieces can be kept that way. One reason we lost some of the IR heritage is because of the policy of auctioning old coaches, rolling stock and steam locomotives. Two hundred and twenty four preserved non-working steam locomotives remain and there are 16 working steam locomotives. The rest have vanished. I mentioned steam, because steam has a special aura and romance associated with it. Take for instance, Indian Steam Railway Society (ISRS), formed in 1999.
Outside the railway circuit, people may not have heard of Beeching Axe. There were two reports by Richard Beeching in the first half of the 1960s —“The Reshaping of British Railways” and “The Development of the Major Railway Trunk Routes”. This led to British Rail closing many stations and railway lines, as a rationalisation exercise. But some of these were opened later, as heritage railways, often steam. Who runs these heritage railways in the UK now? It is almost the private sector and these private sector lines are profit-making. Hence, (a) Is IR alone capable of protecting this railway heritage, financially or otherwise? (b) How does one attract private sector interest, which need not necessarily be commercial? (c) If not the intangible, at least for tangible heritage, can one carve out an entity that is distanced from IR? It cannot be completely delinked from IR. But nor should it be too close to IR, since its decision-making processes are often cumbersome and convoluted. Distancing from IR also enables the entity to look for alternative financial resources. If the principles are accepted, one will need to think about the legal form the entity takes — trust, society, Chapter 8 company. I can see the pros of both trust and Chapter 8, less so for society.
The writer is a member of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog. The views are personal
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
