India’s First Railway
The opening of the Bombay to Thane line was the real beginning of British India.
1853
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
The opening of the Bombay to Thane line was the real beginning of British India.
1853
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Just twenty-three years after the Liverpool and Manchester Railway hosted the world’s first regular steam-hauled passenger service, British entrepreneurs began running the first trains in India. The ‘Illustrated London News’ described it as an event more important than all Britain’s battles on Indian soil.
AT 3.30pm on April 16th, 1853, as the band played ‘God Save the Queen’, fourteen railway carriages carrying four hundred VIPs jolted, and left Bombay for Thane. It was the opening day of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, India’s first passenger-carrying line, and ahead were twenty-one miles of 5'6" track, which the triple-headed train gobbled up in forty-five minutes.*
The railway was the brainchild of George Clark, Chief Engineer to the Bombay Government, and delivered with the help of the East India Company, keenly anticipating a lucrative trade in cotton, silk, sugar and spices. The route was engineered by James John Berkley, a pupil and associate of Clark’s consultant in London, Robert Stephenson.
Despite the highly technical nature of railway-building, just two years separated initial surveys and opening ceremony, thanks to quick-witted and hard-working local navvies. A further section to Kalyan opened in 1854, and by 1950 India’s railways employed over nine million people, and carried a billion passengers every year.
Various figures may be found online for the time taken on the initial journey. Wikipedia has fifty-seven minutes; forty-five minutes is given in ‘Our Indian Railway: Themes in India’s Railway History’ (2006).
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why was the opening of the GIPR especially significant in the history of India?
It was the country’s first passenger-carrying railway.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened in England in 1830. The Great Indian Peninsular Railway opened in India in 1853.