The day the Bangalore Mail steamed into town
2025 marks the centenary of the first electric train in India, which ran between Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) and Kurla in Mumbai on February 3, 1925
With the southwest monsoon making landfall over the Andaman Islands last week and our beloved 4 pm rain showing up in tandem - and how! - Bengaluru’s brief summer is truly done. Since we can no longer moan about the heat, we must shift our baleful gaze elsewhere; this year, the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), with its interminable delays in the opening of the Yellow Line, has offered itself up for the honour.
But let us leave the metro aside for a moment, and focus instead on its predecessor, the railway. 2025 marks the centenary of the first electric train in India, which ran between Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus) and Kurla in Mumbai on February 3, 1925; today, close to 97% of the country’s broad-gauge network, which is 97% of our entire railway network, has been electrified. Karnataka’s own broad-gauge network has been 100% electrified since early 2024.
Almost 75 years before the first electric train, the very first Indian passenger train, a 13-carriage beauty pulled along by three shiny steam engines named Sahib, Sultan and Sindh, puffed out of Bori Bunder station (later Victoria Terminus) on April 16, 1853, completing the 34 km distance to Thane in 57 minutes. This line, like most early railway enterprise in India, was wrought by private entrepreneurship – specifically, by Mumbai businessmen Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Nana Shankarsheth. “Nothing,” exulted the venerable Times of India (estd 1838) on the occasion, “could’ve been more magnificent…”
But even Bombay was late to the railway party. The first proposal for a railway line in the subcontinent was floated in the Madras Presidency as early as 1832, by a government enterprise called the Madras Railway Company (MRC). (Just for context, the first locomotive-hauled passenger train in the world ran from Stockton to Darlington in north-east England on September 27, 1825.) By 1837, MRC had established the first (non-passenger) railway line in India between Chintadripet and Little Mount in Chennai.
Meanwhile, in Mysore, following the death of Tipu Sultan in 1799, the British had reinstated the hereditary ruler, Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar. Soon after, British troops stationed in Tipu’s capital of Srirangapatna petitioned the Maharaja for a tract of land away from the malaria-ridden island for a new military cantonment. The Maharaja obliged, and the Bangalore Cantonment was established in 1806. By the 1820s, however, relations between Mummadi and the British had soured; in 1831, Governor-General Lord William Bentinck dismissed the Maharaja, bringing Mysore directly under British rule. In 1834, the remarkable, much-loved Sir Mark Cubbon took over as Commissioner of Mysore and Coorg.
In Madras Presidency, after a brief hiatus in operations, MRC began construction of the first passenger railway line between Madras (Royapuram) and Arcot (Walajahpet, now Walajah Road Jn) in 1853. On its completion in July 1856, Cubbon lost no time in petitioning MRC for a railway line between Madras Presidency and Bangalore Cantonment. His sustained advocacy won the day, and Cubbon had the pleasure of laying the foundation stone for the Bangalore Cantt station in 1859.
When the Bangalore Mail steamed into Bangalore Cantt on its debut run in 1864 – the same year, incidentally, that north India got its first railway station, Delhi Junction – down the 149-km broad-gauge line from Jolarpettai, it was welcomed with great rejoicing. In the years to come, the Mail would bring trade, commerce and, inevitably, waves of new settlers into Bangalore. It would also prove invaluable in transporting relief supplies to the city during the devastating Mysore famine of 1877-78, which would claim a staggering 1,25,000 lives, a fourth of the kingdom’s population.
Something to think about the next time you ride the Bangalore Mail!
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
