Great Indian Peninsula Railway

Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company
legal form	British public company, privately owned
founding	1845
resolution	1951
Reason for dissolution	Integration into Indian Railways
Seat	London , England
Branch	Transport company

Great Indian Peninsula Railway
Network of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway in 1871
Route length:	2037 km
Gauge :	1676 mm ( colonial track )
Power system :	1500  =
Maximum slope :	27  ‰
Minimum radius :	300 m
Route network 1871
Legend Bombay from 1853 BB&CI to Churchgate in Bombay from 1867 Mahim (Bombay) BB&CI to Baroda from 1859 Thane Thane Viaduct over Thane Creek Kalyan Palasdhari Khopoli Bhor Ghat from 1884 Khandala Kasara Thal Ghat from 1865 Igatpuri Dapoorie Viaduct across Mula Pune Solapur Raichur Madras Railway to Madras from 1871 Bhusawal Nagpur Jabalpur East India Railway to Calcutta from 1871

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway , first Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company , abbreviated GIPR , German about Great Railway of the Indian Peninsula , was a predecessor company of the Central Railway, with headquarters in Boree Bunder station in Mumbai , which later became the Victoria Terminus . GIPR was the first railway company in Asia.

history

prehistory

As early as 1843, Lord Dalhousie investigated the possibility of developing India by rail. He proposed a connection between the three ports of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras . In the same year the engineer George T. Clarke traveled to India on his behalf. Together with the parse Framji Cawasji Banaji , he founded the Bombay Great Eastern Railway in 1844 , which planned a 36 km long double-track railway line from Bombay to Tannah , which would have been divided into two routes to the Bhor Ghat and Thal Ghat passes in the Western Ghats. The entire route network would have been 86 km long. The company was dissolved again on April 21, 1845 due to financial problems.

founding

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company (GIPR), founded in London in 1845, was supposed to pursue the plans of the collapsed Bombay Great Eastern Railway and had even bigger plans: with a 2100 km long route, Bombay should not only connect with the interior of the Indian peninsula, but also be connected to an important port on the east coast. First, however, at least the cities of Pune , Nashik , Aurangabad , Ahmednagar , Solapur , Nagpur , Amravati and Hyderabad should be connected to Bombay. With the railway the export of cotton , silk , opium , sugar and spices should be increased. The board of directors consisted of 25 British people, including officials from the East India Company and bank employees from London. Most were resident in England, but some were also resident in India. The first board of directors consisted of the following members: John Stuart-Wortley , Member of Parliament and Chairman of the Board, WJ Hamilton, Member of Parliament and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors, Frederick Ayrton, formerly an employee of the East India Company, the Cavalrymen Mayor Clayton and Major General Briggs, John Grahama and Colonel Dickenson, citizens of Bombay, John Harvey of the Commercial Bank of London and S.Jervis, director of the London and County Bank on Lombard Street, directors of railway companies will be Richard Paterson, chairman of the Northern and Eastern Railway and Melvil Wilson, Director of the Alliance Assurance Office.

However, the GIPR also failed at first because of the financing. It was not until August 1, 1849, that the British Parliament passed a resolution, which guaranteed the railway company a fixed interest rate on the capital raised, that allowed the railway company to raise share capital of £ 50,000 and become operational. On August 17, 1849, she signed a formal contract with the East India Company for the construction and operation of a 36 km long test route, which would later become part of a long-distance route between Bombay and the Khandesh district and Berar province . The board of directors of the East India Company named James John Berkeley as senior resident engineer and CB Kar and RW Graham as his assistants.

Opening of the main lines

Bombay – Tannah

In 1853 the first railway line in India was opened, which led from Bombay to Tannah , 34 km away . On April 16, the first train on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway left Boree Bunder station in Bombay for Tannah. It took him 57 minutes to reach his destination station. The train, occupied by 400 invited guests, consisted of 14 cars, which were pulled by the three locomotives Sultan , Sindh and Sahib .

Southeast main line

A train on the Tanna Viaduct near Bombay in 1855.

The Tannah– Kalyan section was opened on May 1, 1854. Construction of this section was difficult because a double-lane bridge - the first railway bridge in India - had to be built over Thane Creek and two tunnels. On May 12, 1856, the line via Palasdhari to Khopoli was extended and on June 14, 1858 island operations on the Khandala - Poonah line began. The Palasdhari – Khandala section included the difficult crossing of the Bhor Ghat and took another five years to complete. During this time, the 21 km long gap in the railway operations from Khopoli was overcome with sedan chairs, ponies and wagons. The main line running south-east was from Poonah via Solapur to Raichur , where the Madras Railway was reached and thus the continuous railway connection Bombay – Madras was completed.

Northeastern main line

The line from Callian to Kasara was opened on January 1, 1861, and the steep section of the route over the Thal Ghat to Igatpuri was put into operation on January 1, 1865, completing the crossing of Western Ghat . The route was further extended to Bhusawal near Nusseerabad , where it branched the route. One branch led through the Amravati cotton-growing region to Nagpur and the other led to Jabalpur , where it joined the Allahabad – Jabalpur branch of the East Indian Railway (EIR). The connection Bombay - Calcutta was officially opened on March 7, 1870 and was mentioned in Jules Verne 's novel Journey around the Earth in 80 Days . On the occasion of the opening ceremony, Lord Mayo , the Viceroy of British India, concluded that it would be desirable to open up the whole country with a network of railway lines of the same system as soon as possible.

Further development

In 1868 the route network was 888 km and in 1870 it was 2,037 km. On June 30, 1900, the assets of the GIPR were taken over by the Government of India and merged with those of the Indian Midland Railway , which operated a network of broad gauge lines in the region of Jhansi . The two railways were continued by a newly formed company, which was also called the Great Indian Peninsula Railway . In 1878 the state-funded Dhond – Manmad railway was opened, which, as a tangential line, shortened the Madras – Allahabad connection and made the detour via Callian unnecessary.

In 1918, the GIPR network consisted of 4,300 km of broad-gauge lines and 1,240 km of narrow-gauge lines with a gauge of 762 mm (2.5 feet). The longest narrow-gauge line was the 189 km long Ellichpur – Murtazapur – Yeotmal Railway near Nagpur, which opened continuously in 1913.

On February 3, 1925, electrical operation with 3000 V direct current on the Victoria Terminus – Kurla S-Bahn line began in Bombay. In the same year, on July 1st, the management of the railway passed to the government and the Jabalpur – Allahabad route of the EIR was assigned to the GIPR. Electrification continued, reaching Kalyan in 1929 and Pune and Igatpuri in 1930. In 1929, GIPR was one of the first railways in Asia to acquire a combined dyanamometer and track measuring car . The measuring devices come from Amsler in Schaffhausen .

On June 1, 1930, the Deccan Queen ran for the first time , the first luxury train pulled by an electric locomotive in India, which connected the cities of Bombay and Pune. The tractor was the EA / 1 4006, later named Sir Roger Lumley , Governor of Bombay in the 1930s, and now on display in the National Rail Museum of India in New Delhi .

On November 5, 1951, the GIPR was incorporated into the Central Railway together with the Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway , the Dholpur-Bari Light Railway , the Scindia State Railway .

Web links

Commons : Great Indian Peninsula Railway  - Collection of Pictures, Videos and Audio Files

• Early newspaper articles on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} The Complete Story of Indian Railways. In: DNA India. April 15, 2013, Retrieved April 27, 2016 (American English). 
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Great Indian Peninsula Railway. Families in British India Society, accessed April 27, 2016 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b c} History of Railways from Bombay to the rest of India. In: Railways of the Raj. Retrieved April 27, 2016 . 
4. ↑ The Artisan . Simpkin, Marshall, and Company, 1845, pp. 251 ( Google Book [accessed April 27, 2016]).
5. ^ Allen's Indian Mail and Register of Intelligence for British & Foreign India, China, & All Parts of the East . William H. Allen, 1845, p. 319 ( Google Book [accessed April 27, 2016]).
6. ^ ^{A b} Great Britain Parliament House of Commons: Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command . HM Stationery Office, 1866, p. 27 ( Google Book [accessed April 27, 2016]).
7. ^ Company registration - 1845. In: Grace's Guide. London, ( gracesguide.co.uk ).
8. ^ Incorporation of Great Indian Peninsula Railway , The Evening Standard. November 19, 1845. Retrieved August 16, 2015. 
9. ^ MA Rao: Indian Railways (= India, the land and the people ). National Book Trust, New Delhi 1988, OCLC 221458584 , p. 15.
10. ↑ Appletons' annual cyclopaedia and register of important events of the year: 1862. D. Appleton & Company, New York 1863, p. 690, ( archive.org ).
11. ↑ ^{a b} Shaheed Khan: hinduonnet.com ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The great Indian Railway bazaar. In: The Hindu . April 18, 2002.
12. ^ Roana Maria Costa: A sepia ride, from Boree Bunder to Tannah. In: The Times of India . April 17, 2010, p. 6.
13. ↑ ^{a b} M. A. Rao: Indian Railways. (1988) p. 17.
14. ↑ Krishnan S. Navaneeth: Advent and expansion of Railways: Indian Experience. University Of Hyderabad 2012, p. 15, ( academia.edu ).
15. ^ MA Rao: Indian Railways. (1988) pp. 17/18.
16. ↑ Mihill Slaughter: Railway Intelligence. Volume 11. The Railway Department, Stock Exchange, London 1861, p. 202, ( books.google.co.in ).
17. ^ ^{A b} Superintendent of Government (Ed.): Administration Report on the Railways in India . Calcutta 1918, p. 64–68 ( PDF - the name of the PDF file is misleading, the entire report is contained in the file).
18. ^ Ellichpur-Murtazapur-Yeotmal Railway. Families in British India Society, accessed May 1, 2016 . 
19. ^ New Trains from old. In: Indian Express. February 1, 2011, accessed May 1, 2016 . 
20. ↑ About Indian Railways Evolution . Ministry of Railways website.
21. ↑ L'inspection automatique des voies de chemins de fer . In: Bulletin technique de la Suisse romande . tape 67 , no. 8 , 1941, pp. 85-89 , doi : 10.5169 / seals-51326 .