Triumphs and tragedies: The extraordinary journey of India's first railway

However, this historic milestone achieved by the then-East Indian Railway (EIR) was preceded by a series of unfortunate events that delayed its arrival on the country's landscape

On August 15, 1854, a five-coach train pulled by a British-made locomotive left Howrah at 8:30 am for Hooghly without any fanfare -- signalling an engineering triumph and the beginning of eastern India's first railway.

However, this historic milestone achieved by the then-East Indian Railway (EIR), whose massive network would eventually reach Delhi by the 1860s, was preceded by a series of unfortunate events that delayed its arrival on the country's landscape and in people's consciousness.

A new book on the birth and evolution of the EIR and the East India Railway Company that established it, based on multiple 19th-century-era accounts drawn from a range of archives, has endeavoured to offer an "unbiased narrative" of this railway and the men who built it, brick by brick and steel by steel.

 

"Before the inaugural run, the EIR had already stirred public curiosity in Bengal with its first locomotive-only trial on June 29, 1854, from Howrah to Pandooah, followed by an experimental run on July 6, which included an engine pulling a single coach on the same route," P K Mishra, author of 'Rails Through Raj: The East Indian Railway (1841-1861)', says.

Mishra, a senior officer in the Indian Railways and a staunch advocate for heritage preservation, in an interview with PTI, said the seeds of EIR were sown before the arrival of railways in India in 1853, with the establishment of the East Indian Railway Company on June 1, 1845, as a joint stock company based in London with an office in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

However, "mountains of colonial bureaucracy" that had to be moved before the company was set up, and "delay" in the acquisition of lands and logistical issues, perhaps led to the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR) "stealing a march" on EIR, in being the first railways of India, the author writes in the book.

India's first-ever rail passenger service began on April 16, 1853, when the train ran from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Thane.

The "sluggish progress" of EIR in the Bengal presidency drew hostile comments from local newspapers and public commentators, and the "Calcutta press blamed the EIR and its promoters for the delay, some even calling it a 'chimerical project'", Mishra writes, with references to archival documents.

He cites a critical report in 'Delhi Gazette' published on May 13, 1854, on the delay, which reads, "The opening of the said Railway was intended to come off on the Queen's birthday, but this is now of course, put off", and goes on to criticise Lord Dalhousie, the then-governor general of India.

In the chapter 'EIR: The Inaugural Journey (1854)', Mishra writes, "By early 1854, the tracks between Calcutta and Hoogly lay gleaming and silent - complete, yet idle," adding, "The line, bridges were all ready but locomotives had yet to arrive."  The first set of locomotives reached Calcutta onboard the ship 'Kedgeree', which had sailed from England via Australia, and unloading "such colossal iron beasts" at Howrah, which lacked proper facilities then, was a "triumph of improvisation", he adds.

Adding a tragic turn to these dramatic events unfolding then for the EIR (which evolved into the Indian government-run Eastern Railway, set up in 1952, after Independence) was a calamity that struck in the Bay of Bengal.

The EIR had commissioned the ship 'Goodwin' to transport "first-class carriages and rolling stock from London" for the inaugural run, but as she neared the Bengal coast, she ran aground on an infamous sandbank, and despite rescue attempts, the ship could not be saved, Mishra said.

"But the loss did not stop progress. John Hodgson, EIR's locomotive engineer, resolved to rebuild. With blueprints gone to the sea floor, he designed new carriages from memory and sketches, commissioning the prominent coach builders -- Messrs. Stewart & Co. and Seton & Co. -- to construct what had been lost," he writes.

And then the moment of reckoning came, when on the morning of August 15, 1854, the train left from what was a modest temporary shed at Howrah then (unlike the station edifice today), and reached Hooghly in 91 minutes, covering 24 miles.

For the maiden run, "about 3,000 applications came up, 10 times the capacity of the train", Mishra said.

On February 3, 1855, the Howrah-Raneegunj section was opened with a grand ceremony, with Lord Dalhousie himself present at the Howrah station to witness the historic moment.

The success of EIR not only made the East India Company take notice, but triggered the imagination of ordinary people too, spawning a popular "steet ballad in Bangla" celebrating the arrival of the train.

The meticulously researched, nearly 340-page book with chronologically arranged chapters -- each name prefixed with 'EIR' runs like a train journey, with every chapter akin to a halt along the tracks.

In the first chapter, 'EIR: Birth Pangs (1841-44)', Mishra, nearing 60, shines a spotlight on some of the men who were instrumental in translating the idea into an institution, especially railway pioneer Rowland Macdonald Stephenson, who arrived in Calcutta in 1840s, fired by a desire to bring the railway to India.

For the East India Company, "Stephenson's proposal to lauch railways across the Indian plains sounded fanciful, even delusional," Mishra writes.

"Journalism played a seminal role in bringing railways to India, I would say. Stephenson, under the pseudonym 'Ferrum' (Latin for iron), penned editorials to 'The Englishman', extolling not just the commercial, but the military and administrative virtues of the railway," he said.

For his research for the book, he primarily referred to the repositories at the Calcutta University Library, West Bengal State Archives, Asiatic Society and the British Library in Kolkata, besides archives of the Indian Railways in Delhi and elsewhere, and various online resources, Misra said.

"For me, accessing even a scanned copy of George Turnbull's diary, from a resource abroad, was a prized moment. He was the chief engineer who made the EIR a force to be reckoned with.

"When the Calcutta-Benares line was completed in 1862 with the Soane Bridge being a crowning engineering triumph, a grand durbar was held at Benares (now Varanasi) on February 7, 1863, to celebrate EIR's success," he said.