To commemorate the 150th year of the first running of a train, also called Steam Iron Horse then, in Asia between Bombay and Thane, Central Railways would repeat the history with a "re-run" of locomotive on April 16.
"On Saturday, the 16th April 1853, the first railway line in Asia between Bombay and Thane, a distance of 21 miles was opened for public traffic," a Central Railway official said adding, "we will have a re-run of a train similar to the one flagged off from Boribunder (the earlier name of present-day Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus)".
The historic train had three locomotives - Sindh, Saheb and Sultan with 14 coaches and carried about 400 passengers to Thane (then Tannah) in 57 minutes, he said. "We propose to cover the distance exactly in 57 minutes and also carry 400 odd passengers," he said.
The railway authorities have been making plans to commemorate the 150th year in operation - and thus proving itself as a life line for the commercial capital. Accordingly, the calendar from April 16 (2002) to April 1 (next year) has been declared as sesquicentennial year. Leaving nothing to chance for the success of the programme, they even want to create a new record in own right. "We want Maharashtra Governor P C Alexander to participate in the historic journey. The then Governor Lord Faukland had failed to turn up," the official said. However, a large number of British dignitaries had attended the solemn occasion then, he added.
Presiding over the function as the chairman illustrios Sir William Yardley had made a virtual prohpetic statement - "This is not the triumph of nation over nation, of race over race, of man over his fellow man. It is the triumph of mind over matter .....". He said that the Railway network was bound to improve the "moral and intellectual standards" as the natives would "gradually adapt themselves so as to assimilate a new item of civilisation".
Writing in the same vein, the Illustrated London News reported the next day - "The time honoured maxim that peace has its triumphs as well as war, has just been exemplified in western India by the opening of the Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) Railway on 16th April, which must be commemorated as the greatest of battles and surely more glorious". A century later, the then Railway Minister Madhavrao Scindia admitted in a foreward for a book that "The history of Great Indian Peninsular Railway, which was the fore-runner of the Indian Railways network, is both a chronicle of the progress of the economic and socio-political
events of the 19th century and the emergent national ethos".
In fact, the news of the opening of the railway got worldwide publicity and a considerable literature on the subject. On April 18, 1853 Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, by which name the Times of India was then known, carried a poem under an apt title 'The opening of the Bombay Railway' - "Hissing steam, amid the breathless clouds, The sight of wonder, in whose grasp appears ......".
The train was set in motion at 25 minutes to four o'clock and went majestically along its course to the astonishment and wonder of the assembled thousands. According to old documents, the whole line was densely crowded with spectators from the terminus to the flats beyond Byculla area.
The fares of the first train from Boribunder (CSTC) to Thane for "third class" was five annas and three paisa. For second class, it was one rupee one anna and six paisa and for the first class the fare was Rs two and 10 annas.
Indian Railways, no doubt, has tracked miles since the eventful day and today its network cover 63,000 route km with about 12,000 trains. The railway's staff strength has shot upto 1.5 million which makes it largest system in the world under a single management.
