The Railway Beginnings

Whilst waiting for the results of my exam for entering the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), I had applied to the Bengal Nagpur Railway (BNR) for the post of an Assistant Engineer, as per their advert. The BNR headquarters was in Calcutta, a city I had never visited and which was 1200 miles from Bombay. I was happy, therefore, that we had family connections in that area – my father’s cousin Sarhan Latif was in Calcutta holding the post of Chief of the Stores Department of the Government of India. He also happened to be a good friend of the Agent of the BNR.

I got a call in January of 1937 to see the BNR’s Chief Engineer and the railway sent me a First Class pass to travel to Calcutta for my interview. I made my way to Calcutta and to Uncle Sarhan’s place, then had my interview. Much to my happiness, the next day I was told that I had been accepted but the formalities would take some time and that I would be informed after I returned to Bombay. In the meantime, I was invited to the Officer’s Club at Garden Reach Railway Colony that evening to be introduced to the other officers. On my arrival at the Club, the Chief Engineer put his arms around my shoulders and introduced me as the “New Member of the Family” to the various Heads of Departments, and, more importantly, to the Chairman of the company, Sir Trevor Wynne (who was in the midst of his final visit to India).

Calcutta, at that time, hosted the headquarters of three different railways. The East Bengal Railway (EBR) served Eastern Bengal (which is now mostly Bangladesh) and the Calcutta suburbs south to Diamond Harbour. Diamond Harbour is about 30 miles south of Calcutta and is situated at the furthest spot north on the River Hooghly (ed. this is the name for the Ganges at this point in its journey to the sea) at which deeper draught ships can make it up from the Bay of Bengal. The EBR was a Government of India-owned railway.

The other important railway based in Calcutta, and the largest of the three, was the East Indian Railway (EIR). This one served the industrial belt on the Calcutta-Delhi route; the rich rice and wheat growing areas along the River Ganges; the heavily populated areas of North Bengal; the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh (now known as Uttar Pradesh). The EIR was also Government of India-owned.

Unlike the other two railways, the BNR was owned by a company and the shareholders were guaranteed a minimum return of 4% interest by the Government of India. In return, the Government kept a close watch on the running of the railway with’s its appointed auditor being a strict watchdog! The BNR served the East Coast, running along the coast of the Bay of Bengal to the city of Waltair [ed. now called Visakhapatnam] while passing through the capital of Orissa (Cuttack). The other arm connected Calcutta with the flourishing city of Nagpur, the capital of the Central Provinces. The areas served by the BNF were sparsely populated on the whole, but the goods traffic was considerable due to coal, iron ore, timber, bamboo and rice. Tatanagar, an important city with India’s biggest steel plant (at that time with 3 million tons output per annum) was on the Bombay main line. The major income came from traffic from the coal fields around the junction station of Adra. Coal from this area was supplied to the steel plants at Tatanagar and Burnpore (on the EIR main line to Delhi).

The Engineering Cadre of the BNR was about 32 gazetted officers, including a Chief Engineer, two Superintending Engineers, a Bridge Engineer, 9 District Engineers, and 20 Assistant Engineers. Of these, only 5 were Indian. Two of the Indians were on the pre-1933 pay scale (rising up to Rs. 2,500 per month), with the other three on the post-1933 scale (rising up to 2,250 per month). In the other departments, the percentage of Indians was a little higher but still very low compared to government railways. As a result, the BNR was called the “White Railway”! The BNR’s emblem was a shield in gold with a Bengal tiger standing sideways on the upper half and a coiled cobra in the lower half – all of that on a maroon background.

I returned to Bombay and continued to learn the practical side of my engineering profession as an apprentice to Messrs. Gammons (India). The firm was constructing a bridge for the Public Works Department of Bombay (under father) on the main highway from Bombay to the south, via Kolaba. The bridge spans were reinforced concrete arches with inclined steel rod hangers. It was a modern sophisticated design, economical in materials, but very time consuming in the calculations required (long before the advent of computers!). The spans were supported on foundations of wells and piers placed on the rocky bottom of the creek. The creek was tidal so it had a rise and fall of about 10 to 15 feet daily. As a result, the bottom of the wells were sealed by pumping “colloidal” cement by pipes into the bottom of a layer of 3/4 to 1 inch crushed stone filling (pumped in when the tide was high). The wells’ waters pushed the cement grout tight as the tidal water lowered outside. The colloidal cement was a new thing and very interesting to me. It did not get diluted when it was made into a colloidal solution and its setting properties were not spoilt.

In early February, 1937 I received my appointment letter and was instructed to report to the Head Office at Garden Reach, Calcutta. So, once again, Mona and I landed on Sarhan and Najma and I reported to Hill, the Chief Engineer. I was told that I was posted as Assistant Engineer (AE) at Nainpur, on the Satpura Narrow Gauge (2 feet, 6 inches) line. Nainpur was a very small town in the Central Provinces at about 2,000 feet above sea level, on a plateau in the Satpura Mountain Range. These mountains run along the northern edge of the Deccan Plateau. It is a hilly area with extensive teak forests, as well as many other hardwood species, and was teeming with all types of “game”, including spotted deer (cheetal), panthers, black sloth bears and sambhars. Also to be found were jungle fowl, ducks partridges and quail, along with the usual assortment of jackals, hyenas and wolves! The beautiful Weinganga River, immortalized in Kipling’s Jungle Book stories, meandered its way in the area, criss-crossing the Narrow Gauge line four times. The river had good Mahseer fishing in its many rocky pools. Mahseer is of the carp family and often gives as good a fight as a trout!

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