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The story
1845–1849
The first board of directors formed in 1845 comprised thirteen members and Rowland Macdonald Stephenson became the first managing director of the company.
Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (later Sir Rowland, but familiarly known as Macdonald Stephenson) and three assistants travelled from England in 1845 and "with diligence and discretion" surveyed, statistically studied and costed the potential traffic for a railway route from Calcutta (the then commercial capital of India) to Delhi via Mirzapur. They assessed that the maximum cost of a twin-track line would not exceed £15000 per mile if the land was available without charge. The East Indian Railway Company was then formed and raised money in London. A contract was signed between the East India Company and the East Indian Railway Company on 17 August 1849, entitling the latter to construct and operate an "experimental" line between Calcutta and Rajmahal, 161 km (100 miles) long at an estimated cost of £1 million which would be later extended to Delhi via Mirzapur.
1850–1851
On 7 May 1850, the East Indian Railway Company's managing director Macdonald Stephenson, George Turnbull, the company's Chief Engineer, and the engineer Slater made an initial survey from Howrah (across the River Hooghly from Calcutta) to Burdwan on the route to the Raniganj coalfields. By June, there was an impasse, in that the government did not allow Turnbull and his engineers to mark a route on the ground. Specifications for works were however advertised on 1 July and tenders received on 31 July for six contracts. Bamboo towers 80 feet (24 m) tall were then built above the palm trees at Serampore and Balli Khal to set out the line.
1851–1853
On 29 January 1851 the East Indian Railway Company took possession of its first land. Turnbull and other British engineers began detailed surveys of the line. They chose the critical crossing point on the 5,000-foot-wide (1,500 m) Son River (the largest Ganges tributary) on 17 February. The best route to Raniganj was determined in May and June. The plans for Howrah station were submitted on 16 June.
Tenders for 11 contracts arrived on 31 October 1851. In December Turnbull continued his survey: he took levels and defined the line from Burdwan to Rajmahal.
1854–1863
Line openings
The 541 miles (871 kilometres) of line from Howrah to Benares were opened to:
Hooghly (37 km or 23 miles) for passenger traffic on 15 August 1854. More than 3000 applications were received from people wanting to ride in the first train in eastern India. The first train ran to full capacity. The train left Howrah station at 8:30 a.m. and reached Hooghly in 91 minutes. It had three first-class and two second-class coaches. It also had three trucks for third-class passengers and a brakevan for the guard. All of these were built in India, because the ship ferrying the original coaches from England had unfortunately met with natural disaster on the high seas and consequently sank. The locomotive however was imported, though not without its own difficulties. The ship bringing the locomotive had initially, due to an error, sailed to Australia, and the engine had to be shipped back to India.
During the first 16 weeks, the company was delighted to carry 109,634 passengers: 83,118 third class, 21,005 second class, and 5511 first class. The gross earnings, including the receipts of a few tons of merchandise were £6793.
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Pundooah on 1 September 1854.
Burdwan in February 1855.
Raniganj with its coalfields on 3 February 1855. In 1855, 617,281 passengers were carried and contracts made to carry 100,000 tons of coal from the Raniganj colliery to Howrah.
Adjai in October 1858.
Rajmahal (on the River Ganges) in October 1859. The first train ran from Howrah to Rajmahal via Khana (now known as the Sahibganj Loop) on 4 July 1860. 1,388,714 passengers were carried in 1859.
Bhagalpur in 1861.
The loop from Khana Junction to Kiul via Jamalpur, including the Monghyr branch in February 1862. In the same year the line reached Mughal Sarai via the present line beyond Kiul. The sections from Luckee Sarai to Danapore and Danapore to Mughal Sarai were completed in the meantime.
Son River. George Turnbull inspected the Son bridge and judged it complete on 4 November 1862.
Across the River Ganges from Benares in December 1862.
Including branch lines this totalled 601 miles (967 kilometres).
Bridges, tunnel and cholera
The most significant bridge was the girder bridge over the Son River (then known in English as the Soane River) which at the time was understood to be the second longest in the world. Other significant bridges were the girder bridges over the Kiul and Hullohur rivers and the masonry bridge over the Adjai. The Monghyr tunnel was a challenge. In late 1859, a horrific cholera epidemic in the Rajmahal district killed some 4000 labourers and many of the British engineers.
Celebrations on completion
On 5 February 1863, a special train from Howrah took George Turnbull, the Viceroy Lord Elgin, Lt Governor Sir Cecil Beadon and others over two days to Benares inspecting the line on the way. They stopped the first night at Jamalpur near Monghyr. They alighted at the Son bridge and inspected it. In Benares there was a durbar on 7 February to celebrate the building of the railway and particularly the bridging of the Son river, the largest tributary of the Ganges.
The Chief Engineer responsible for all this construction from 1851 to 1862 was George Turnbull who was acclaimed in the Indian Official Gazette of 7 February 1863 paragraph 5 as the "First railway engineer of India".
Criticisms
Some historians like Irfan Habib argue that because the contracts signed between East India Company and EIR in 1849 guaranteed 5% return on all capital invested, initially there was no inducement for economy or for employing Indians instead of high-paid Europeans (but initially, there were only experienced British railway civil engineers and no Indian ones). EIR was stated in 1867 to have spent as much as Rs 300,000 on each mile of railway, the construction described by a former Finance Member in India as the most extravagant works ever undertaken.
From Wikipedia’s article on East Indian Railway Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4