Upper India Railway

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1852 Announcement

THE UPPER INDIA RAILWAY COMPANY.- A company under this title has been formed in London for the purpose of introducing railways into Upper India. The first section, about 130 miles in length, will commence at Allahabad, at the junction of the Ganges and Jumna, and will terminate at Cawnpore. Allahabad is a city of great importance, and one of the principal civil and military stations, and Cawnpore is the largest military station in India.

It is stated that there is both by steamers and country craft a continuous permanent water communication between Calcutta and Allahabad. The yearly tonnage of the Lower Ganges is 1,600,000 by the country craft alone; the number of passengers is also very great. Deep water ceases at Allahabad, and, consequently, it is at this important city that the real difficulty and expense of transit begin. Above Allahabad, notwithstanding the defective river navigation, and the rude and expensive land carriage, which costs from 4d. to 8d. per ton per mile, moving at the slow rate of ten miles in twenty-four hours, there is an officially ascertained traffic of above 1,000,000 tons, and a land passenger traffic by various conveyances, exceeding 100,000 per annum, besides passengers by boats, and about 300,000 travellers on foot.

This certainly seems to promise employment for a railway; and if it is correct, as is stated in a report made by Major J. P. Kennedy, late director of the railway department in India, to the Government, that "between Allahabad and Delhi there is no engineering question of difficulty whatever, as the beautiful flat bed (extending for several hundred miles in the direction of the line, in the Dooab, between the rivers Ganges and Jumna), with its numerous commercial towns, offers, perhaps, the most singularly inviting district for laying down a railway that can be found in the world; free as it is from inundation, from hills, from river-crossings, and road-crossings, in short, from any impediment, and almost every ordinary source of expenditure in railway construction," the projected enterprise, if conducted with ordinary care and judgment, cannot but be profitable to the shareholders. The capital to be raised is £1,000,000, in 60,000 shares of £20 each, with power of increase as it may be required for the construction of future sections.

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1853 July. Merged with the East Indian Railway

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