From haunted rail tunnels to a plan to build a rail network from the English Channel to the river Indus, senior mid-day journalist Rajendra B Aklekar's new book is a joyride for history buffs. Here are some of his favourite finds
India's first electric passenger train. Pic courtesy/Central Railway archives
The Red Hills near today’s Chennai are called so because of the colour of their soil and rocks. By 1836, the construction of a rudimentary railway line began in these hills within the city of Madras to transport hard laterite used as road-building material. It was completed in 1837. The line, though basic and experimental, remains the oldest documented railway in India today.
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The first experiment was conducted on Tuesday, August 28, 1838. It has been documented under “Experiment No. 1 with Locomotive”. The technical specifications of the locomotive were as follows: It had three-foot-long arms with a thickness of 1/5th inch. The weight of the engine and carriage was 2,800 lbs. Three other carriages, with an additional weight of 3,000 lbs, were attached. The coal and water, along with other elements, added up to about 600 lbs. Twenty-one persons occupied the carriages.
Bullock carts’ race with trains
Early railway construction – Bombay port: 2. pic courtesy/Mumbai Port Trust archives
In the mid-1860s, bullock cart owners in Bombay were furious with the new transport called railways. They decided to put up a fight and began charging one rate from the hinterland to Bombay so as to prevent business from going over to the railways. This succeeded for a while, worrying railway traffic managers. The worried agent (the manager) of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway (today’s Central Railway) in 1868 wrote a harried letter to the Railway Board, suggesting that the railways appoint a person to solicit traffic. Excerpts from his letter: “We are, I regret to say, threatened with a severe competition on the part of the bullock cart drivers from cotton markets in the south-eastern district. I shall, I find, have to establish, appoint a person specially to solicit traffic and report as to what is being done at the various markets.”
Of ghosts and haunted rail tunnel
This is a narrative about a British railway engineer who committed suicide due to the humiliation after he had miscalculated the alignment while constructing a tunnel on the Kalka Shimla Railway. Deeply hurt after he was fined '1 by the British government, and unable to face the workers he had made toil for the tunnel, Colonel Barog killed himself with his own gun during a morning walk. The tunnel was finally constructed under Chief Engineer HS Herlington at a cost of '0.84 million. Herlington also faced similar problems in finding proper alignment of the railway track. It is believed that Baba Bhalkhu, a local saint from Jhaja, near Chail, who possessed supernatural engineering skills, helped the British engineers lay this track. This has been documented in government records as well. The 1.14 km tunnel is today named after Colonel Barog.
A tiger at an Indian railway station. Pic courtesy/Wikimedia Commons
It is said that the friendly ghost of Barog can still be seen around the abandoned tunnel. There are believed to be five more legends around this rail tunnel.
A sacred sati spot on a platform
A Sati relic at Talgaria station. Pic courtesy/The Railway Magazine
There’s a story about how a hollow ditch at the small station of Talgaria (located in today’s Jharkhand) proved to be a problem for early railway engineers. The “divine hole”, as referred to in records, was once used as a sati site. Crowds of believers visited it even after a railway alignment, and when the station platform crossed over it, railway engineers retained the site. They covered it with metal plates so as not to hurt the religious sentiments of the people.
The seven types of rail robbers
Did you know that there were categories of robbers and criminals on the railways? This interesting piece of research has been sourced from verbal and documentary information and published in 1909 by Hargrave Lee Adam, a crime writer from the early 20th century. He gives elaborate details about this in his writings. To quote him: “The railway thieves of India are among the most astute, secretive, skilful, and difficult to detect of Indian criminals.”
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