East Indian Railway: 1859 Journey
Note: This is a sub-section of the East Indian Railway
1859 Journey from Calcutta to Cawnpore partly on the East Indian Railway. [1]
The train started from Howrah about nine o’clock in the morning and crawled slowly along all day reaching Raniganj – 120 miles – at six in the evening; a speed of about fourteen miles per hour. Ranaganji seemed to be a rambling, chaotic place, a mere jumble of rusty rails and dusty tracks. Here the railway left off and after a dinner of sundry tough and tasteless dishes at a night-mare of a half-finished and half-furnished rooms, sarcastically called the Hotel, I found my dak gari waiting for me. This vehicle, which I now beheld for the first time, was an oblong four-wheeled carriage – like a box on wheels – with a sliding panel door on each side, windows and canvas shades all round it and a board behind for the syce (groom). It had been painted green but that was long ago....
The Grand Trunk Road was then a magnificent, broad, level, well-metalled road with staging bungalows every fifteen miles where travellers could get meals and sleep if they wished to....
(At Allahabad) there was a bit more railway by which I travelled so far as Cawnpore where it left off again. The fading sunlight lasted long enough to enable me to take a hurried glance at the ghastly place; a desolate, sandy waste it then was. The dreadful well was marked by a few boards, the walls of the roofless houses were riddled with shot and tottering; ruins, dust, flies, evil odours and general misery and distress was all one could see. A rough sort of hotel had been formed out of the ruins of an old mess house, where they gave us an atrocious dinner. After which I got in to my dak gari and fell asleep, glad to get away from the horrible place....
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian by John Beames (Written in 1896). Published 1961.