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The private trains
of illustrious rulers in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Jamnagar, Gondal, Junagadh,
Kutch, Dholpur, Morvi and Palampur, to mention a few, proved
invaluable in expanding the network of rail tracks across India
The English arrived
on our shores nanny-reared and bright-eyed, rearing to commence a
lifelong romance with this distant land. Alas, a largely hostile
host country, inclement weather and rampant disease quickly
disillusioned the sturdiest of that lot. Thus traumatized, many of
them harked back to balmier times beside warm hearths, surrounded by
toy trains and wooden soldiers. Soldiering, they continued to play at
quelling rebellious natives wherever they went, but it was only
towards the middle of the nineteenth century that the Englishman
began playing at trains and platforms in India. And once they got
down to it, there was no stopping them. It seemed as though a long
suppressed childhood fantasy had finally spewed forth a wild frenzy
of track- laying and platform-building. It was to herald the dawn of
the great Indian Railways.
The East India
Railway Company was established in 1844. This company in
collaboration with the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company of
England set about the task of laying tracks and operating locomotives
in the Calcutta and Bombay regions. The companies were to be provided
free land for laying of tracks and construction of railway stations
and a five percent guarantee on their investments. These two private
companies were to cover the length and breadth of the country with a
web of tracks connecting all the major towns of the period within a
span of two decades — between 1853 and 1873. In 1873, Lord Mayo
announced a shift in the existing policy of laying only broad gauge
tracks with a width of 5' 6" and introduced the meter gauge
(tracks a meter apart) and the narrow gauge (2' 6"). The rapid
expansion of the railways in the country was not so much to provide a
means of transport to the natives as to cater to their own ambitions
of speedy movement of goods to ports for their outward journey to the
mother country, combined with a means of speedy transport of troops
across the nation to quell rebellion and unrest.
The monopoly of the
private companies operating the Indian railways was modified in 1879
when a number of princely states were permitted to operate their own
private railways. No guarantee on investment was, however, extended
to these courtly gentlemen. In the same year, the royal house of
Jodhpur began construction on a private meter gauge railway, all on
their own. The British harking back to their childhood and aware that
most of the Indian royalty had been, not unlike themselves, tutored
by English nannies, believed that the Indian princes would lay tracks
for toy trains for their own private amusement. However, they were
proved wrong, for some of the finest tracks were laid and elegant
compartments fashioned by the pioneering princes. Some of these, like
the trains operating in the rural environs of Vadodara district,
Gujarat, today, owe their origins to the astute Gaekwads of Baroda
(Vadodara).
Royalty in India was
not without their own private peccadilloes. Despite the appendage of
being one of the richest men in the world, the Nizam of Hyderabad was
excruciatingly parsimonious in the furnishing of his private rail
saloon. Devoid of a stick of furniture save the carpeted floor, he
preferred to sleep on the floor of his carriage for the length of any
journey he undertook. He was also enamoured of the number thirteen,
ensuring that his private bogie was emblazoned with those auspicious
numbers.
Though Jodhpur
became the forerunner amongst the princes to commence private rail
operations, the Nizam of Hyderabad had in fact stolen a slight march
over his royal colleague in having collaborated with the British to
start a joint rail operation in the Deccan, known at that time as the
“Nizam Guaranteed State Railways”. The decade was to spawn
many royal railways, predominantly in the Deccan, Gujarat and
Rajasthan. These royal trains were to showcase the extent of the
owner’s opulence with the exception of the Nizam of Hyderabad
who displayed none of that lucre.
In sharp contrast,
the Maharaja of Mysore strewed luxury around him while he travelled
in his coach and always had a retinue of staff to serve his every
whim. He also needed the large contingent of staff to hoist the coach
up in order to change the underbelly of his saloon to the width of
the track he was traversing. Within the coach, was a luxurious bed; a
fine suite of richly upholstered chairs and the panelling was of
teak. In the pantry car, royal chefs tossed up delectable meals fit
for a king.
The originator of
the ‘Patiala peg’, Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, had his own
unique ideas about train travel. Engaging the services of an English
engineer called Bowles, the pair fashioned a monorail transport
system that was both animal drawn and ran on a track. The major
portion of the weight of the train was borne by the main wheel on the
single track, while an ancillary wheel supported the balance by
running alongside on a concrete track. Something of a cross between
animal-drawn transport and the steam train, it moved more efficiently
than the conventional animal drawn carriage but was a poor second to
the steam engine. The Maharaja, anxious to use the 500 hundred odd
mules in his private army, harnessed them onto his contraption to
toil for the oat rations they received. A couple of years later,
Bhupinder Singh acquired steam engines and gave his mules a
well-deserved break.
Perhaps the most
enterprising and forward looking of the princes was Khanderao Gaekwad
of Baroda, Gujarat. He introduced the narrow gauge line in 1863, the
carriages harnessed to a pair of bullocks. These animals occasionally
relieved by ponies, hauled on an average three to four coaches loaded
with passengers and goods. By 1873, he replaced them with steam
power. But the lines that he laid are still extant and carry
passengers into the tribal heartland of the district, areas so remote
and economically backward that they would have run the risk of being
marginalized today had not the Gaekwad laid communication links to
them a century-and-a-half earlier.
Many of the coaches and their
engines, some in mint condition, can still be viewed at the National
Rail Museum in New Delhi. In an age, bereft of the joy of train
travel, when aircraft and diesel locomotives have deprived our
children of the joy of gently ambling along the chug-chug of the
steam engine, the breeze gently blowing one’s hair askew and an
occasional smut in the eye causing one to blink, we mourn the passing
of an era now ensconced within museum walls. All that remains is a
fading memory of a romance that once existed, of packing a holdall
and boarding a train to be steamed away to far away places and
undiscovered adventures.
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