Triumphs & tragedies: Extraordinary journey of EIR, eastern India’s first railway

New Delhi: 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 Indian 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, 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.