The East India Company first arrived in India as early as 1600 but was for much of its first century what it said on the tin, a trading company interested in profit principally from cloth and spices, and later in a wider variety of produce such as silk, tea and opium. Gradually, though, the Company became something more: an overt weapon of imperialism. By the mid-eighteenth century, ‘company’ troops were fighting the French for control of India and over the next decades, through a mixture of treaties with local maharajahs and wars against both local and European opponents, the Company ruled over large swathes of its territory. There were, however, still large chunks, such as Hyderabad and parts of the vast Deccan plain, that were under the control of local maharajahs, and Portugal and France still had coastal interests.

By the second quarter of the nineteenth century, while railways were being built in many countries across the world, the East India Company was in full control of the subcontinent but was not particularly keen to join the party. After the almost simultaneous opening in 1830 of the world’s first major railways in England and in the USA, a few progressive Indian business people had suggested creating a network in India. There were a couple of local initiatives that are sometimes claimed to be the first lines in India, but they were in reality more akin to the wagon ways that had long existed in the UK to transport minerals from mines to the nearest waterway than fully fledged railways. In 1836, work started on a short line near Madras at Chintadripet to transport granite for roadbuilding, and it opened, as the five-mile-long Red Hill Rail Road, the following year. Although the traction was mostly provided by animals hauling the wagons and, on the return trip of the empties, by a combination of gravity and a sail, one or possibly two or three very crude ‘rotary’ steam locomotives were apparently deployed for a while, but details, as with all these early schemes, remain sketchy. The promoter, Captain Arthur Cotton, sought to be allowed to carry passengers on the line but was refused permission by the Madras authorities. However, there is a report that on one journey, in August 1838, twenty-one passengers in four carriages were hauled by one of these locomotives, thus, if true, preceding by fifteen years the opening of the Bombay–Thana line, the usual date given by historians as the subcontinent’s inaugural passenger journey.

There were other early initiatives, such as a line on a dam project at Rajamundry in Andhra Pradesh, where wagons were hauled by men on tracks, greatly helping the movement of heavy stone. A few years later, an extensive network, stretching more than ten miles, was created to assist the construction of the Solani aqueduct in Uttaranchal in northern India. That line also appears to have seen the first extensive use of a steam locomotive in India, a large six-wheeled standard-gauge engine imported from Leeds. Assembled in situ from parts sent from Britain and carried overland to the site, it was named Thomason in honour of the lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces and was reckoned to be able to haul 200 tons at a speed of 4 mph. There are doubts over its fate and even its precise manufacture, but the generally accepted version is that, after only nine months in service, ‘it disintegrated in a boiler explosion’, which, apparently, was ‘to the delight of the construction workers who had viewed it more as a hindrance than a help’.¹

However, none of these early uses of railway technology had any long-term significance in terms of the development of the subcontinent’s rail network. Nor did the odd attempt by Indians to push for the construction of railways, such as the suggestion, in 1844, of a Bengali merchant, Dwarkanath Tagore, who offered to fund a third of the capital of a line linking Calcutta north-west to the Burdwan coalfields. There were other expressions of interest by Indian industrialists, but nothing came of any of these schemes.

It was pressure from merchants in Britain that persuaded the British government to consider the introduction of railways in India. The Governor-General of India from 1844 to 1848, Lord Hardinge, who in effect ruled the nation, suggested that the East India Company should support initiatives by railway promoters to build an east–west line across India. He was clear about the compelling reasons for wanting to see the line built as, in his opinion, ‘on military considerations alone, the grant of one million sterling … may be contributed to the great line when completed from Calcutta to Delhi, and a pecuniary saving be effected by a diminution of military establishments’.² Hardinge’s argument that facilitating rapid transport between major cities would permit a reduction in the number of troops required to be kept in barracks was the first articulation of a line of thinking that would play a key role in the early history of India’s rail network. Supporting the ability of the military to remain in control of the country was always a useful extra line of reasoning to deploy in favour of the railways and, indeed, this military rationale was to play a key role in the development of Indian railways. The military imperative was not, however, the initial stimulus for the railways’ introduction, nor a major component of their ultimate raison d’être.

The East India Company, whose power was beginning to wane in the face of a more detailed oversight of the subcontinent by the British government, was initially opposed to the building of railways. Its board, known as the Court of Directors, set out a series of reasons why railways and India were not compatible in a letter to the Governor-General. It was a comprehensive list which included weather-related phenomena such as the ‘periodical rains and inundations’ and ‘violent winds’, the hostile nature of the flora and fauna, the fact that it would be impossible to fence in the railway and the difficulty in attracting ‘competent contractors and trustworthy engineers’. The killer point seemed to be, in the eyes of the London-based board, the effect of the ‘vertical sun’, though they did not explain precisely what they meant by that.³ In reality it was a bureaucratic response designed to avoid doing something in the face of pressure from the government. One key aspect of disagreement was that the government realized the promoters would require a guarantee on their rate of return, an inducement the East India Company vehemently opposed.

The Company’s resistance proved to be to no avail. The forces pushing for the railways were far greater than those arraigned against them. The key supporters included the powerful textile manufacturers, who were anxious to source cotton in India and sell the finished product to its people. Alongside them were the shipping interests, who were not only keen to carry the increased trade between the two nations that would result from the development of a rail network, but also, specifically, to supply their relatively new steamships with coal from the mines of western Bengal, which could be brought to the port of Calcutta by rail, allowing them to refuel on the way to points further east. The vision outlined by the supporters and railway promoters was indeed alluring, holding out ‘the prospect of vast and opulent India becoming, once opened up by railways, a fabulous supply house of cotton and wheat and a huge consumer of textile and other manufactured products of Britain’.⁴ This powerful combination of business interests held much influence in the British parliament and ultimately forced the East India Company begrudgingly to accept the inevitability of railways coming to India.

However, the initial plan for the railways seemed to take into account the Company’s misgivings by covering only two sections of line, totalling a mere 142 miles. The idea was that the two lines would be ‘experimental’ because of the doubts over the viability of railways in India, and, therefore, if they failed or proved technically impossible, the plan could be discontinued without substantial investment. This was pretty timid stuff since by the time the go-ahead was given in 1849, the railway age across the world was in full swing, with most major countries having developed networks and the UK already boasting a system that would soon top 5,000 miles. Modest as it was, the scheme would still ensure India would be a pioneer, by building the first system in Asia.

The primitive nature of India’s transport network was another factor that made railways attractive. There was a system of crude roads, but travel on them was notoriously slow, especially as oxen and buffalo, far more suited to the climate than horses, were used to haul the carts that carried both people and agricultural produce. There was one exception, which interestingly later led to an experiment in running steam trains on roads rather than rails. This was the Grand Trunk Road, which opened in 1839 between Calcutta and Delhi, and was extended to Peshawar (now in Pakistan) twenty years later. For its time, it was a very good, well-surfaced and wide road, so much so that in the early 1870s a mechanically minded army officer, Rookes Crompton (who later founded the Crompton company, which made light bulbs), decided to try to run steam vehicles along it. Crompton, stationed at Nowshera on the Grand Trunk Road near Peshawar, brought over steam engines from Edinburgh to run on the road in an effort to speed up transport. Bullock carts travelled at the glacial pace of only 2 mph, slower than walking pace, and the army feared this was not fast enough for troops. The high standard of the trunk road and the sluggishness of the carts persuaded the Governor-General, Lord Mayo, to fund the experiment. With the first engine, The Primer, Crompton embarked on a journey of thirty miles from Umballa to Kalka in the Punjab but encountered various difficulties, such as the vehicles being too heavy for the bridges and the shortage of coal (wood provided insufficient power). He persevered with two other engines which he had tested back in the UK, but again technical problems with crankshafts and the high cost of the solid rubber tyres led to the abandonment of the scheme, though Crompton claimed that the ‘train’ could haul nineteen vehicles and a load of forty tons, and climb up to as much as a 1 in 18 gradient at speeds of 5 mph or more. It was, though, never going to be reliable enough, and, instead, a rail line was soon built connecting Umballa and Kalka with Delhi.

Interestingly, similar experiments had taken place in the UK and France before the railways won out, as they did in India. However, it was inconceivable that the road network could be the solution to nineteenth-century India’s transport needs. Much of the network was far older than the Grand Trunk Road, having been built under the Mughal Empire, and it had fallen into neglect after its collapse in the late eighteenth century. The terrible condition of the roads was a catalyst for the development of the railways, both for commercial and for military purposes.

The lack of cheap transport made the export of many commodities uneconomic as the costs were too high in relation to their value and there was considerable spoilage, given the crude nature of the carts. There were the odd exceptions, such as Bengali rice, which could be exported thanks to cheap river transport. Indian cloth, a product expensive enough to be transported over long distances, was also sold extensively abroad (until the British imposed tariffs to protect its mills). However, for the most part, the absence of cheap and reliable transport meant that many regions were effectively cut off and unable to trade, greatly limiting the size of potential markets and consequently restricting the potential economic development of the subcontinent.

It is easy to be cynical about the altruistic reasons often cited at the time for the encouragement of railways in India, but selflessness was a genuine force in Victorian administration. Many supporters of the iron road saw the railways as a civilizing influence, one that would, to put it bluntly, make India a bit more like us. These arguments cannot simply be dismissed as merely masking imperialism under a cloak of altruism, since the case for railways was made by numerous prominent Victorians and accorded with their wider view of Britain’s role in the world. Lord Dalhousie, who succeeded Hardinge as Governor-General, himself put it succinctly: ‘They [the railways] will lead to some similar progress in social improvement that has marked the introduction of improved communication in various Kingdoms of the Western World.’⁵ Or as, twenty years later, Grant Duff, an official in the India Office during Gladstone’s government, argued: ‘If we are not in India to civilize and raise India, we had better leave it as soon as we can and wind up our affairs.’⁶

The railways also had a great champion who was to be crucial to their introduction. In the history of railway development in every country of the world, there is invariably a pioneering figure who can be characterized as the father of the railways (they are all men). In the case of India, it is undoubtedly Lord Dalhousie who merits this title. He took over as Governor-General in 1848 and was, according to the historian John Keay, ‘a modernising and imperious workaholic’⁷ who routinely worked sixteen- or even eighteen-hour days. He was a firm advocate of Britain’s imperial role, believing that extending it wherever possible would be good for India. During his eight-year tenure, several princely states were taken under Britain’s wing thanks to his clever policy of assuming control over any state where a ruler had died without having a son who could inherit the title. Dalhousie had already been involved in the railway industry back in the UK as President of the Board of Trade – the ministry responsible at the time for the railways – in Robert Peel’s government during the collapse of the railway mania in 1845. Dalhousie’s voracious appetite for work was not wasted, and he was one of those politicians who could master both the big picture and the smallest detail. When he accepted the role of Governor-General of India, he made it clear that he alone would determine policy in the subcontinent, independent of party politics back home, and consequently much of the shape, policies and practices of Indian railways today are a result of the ideas he set out in two renowned ‘minutes’ written in 1850 and 1853 respectively to the East India Company’s Court of Directors.

These are extraordinary and extensive documents, written personally in long hand with the second one running to 216 pages and penned with an eye to future historians. Dalhousie did what the British government had never done at home and planned a network of railways, setting out in some detail the order in which they should be built. He cited political and commercial reasons for their construction, and dismissed the long list of objections cited by the Court. There were no insuperable engineering problems, he argued, though he accepted the main difficulty was the fording of India’s vast rivers. He did not attempt to disguise the fact that there were good commercial reasons for the establishment of railways, which would open up coalfields and other sources of minerals for exploitation. Dalhousie pointed out how much time would be saved if there were a line linking Calcutta with Bombay, obviating the need for the long sea voyage through the Palk strait between Ceylon and India. Since his relentless expansion of British control over India necessitated the occasional war, Dalhousie did not omit the military imperative, repeating the notion that the railways would ensure the security of British rule more cheaply. In sum, railways ‘would encourage enterprise, multiply production, facilitate the discovery of latent resources, increase national wealth and encourage “progress in social improvement”’.⁸

What was there not to like? Well, there was the fact that this was a nakedly imperial project that not only would later attract the wrath of nationalists but which also limited the usefulness of the railways to the country in which they were being built. As Ian J. Kerr, the most productive historian of Indian railways, summed it up, ‘The interests of the Indians were incidental although, as represented in the writings of Dalhousie and many Britons, the progressive consequences for India of the railroads was a self-evident truth.’⁹ In other words, the benefits of railways for the subcontinent may have been incidental, but they were nevertheless substantial.

There was, however, the issue of how these lines would be built. Already promoters in Britain had created railway companies with the intention of constructing lines in India, and they had put forward numerous competing schemes. It was a cut-throat business, and the various interests were not averse to criticizing each other’s plans, which did little to help the overall cause of the Indian railways, and partly explains why so little progress was made in the 1840s.

The Government of India was in no position to carry out the work itself, and, in any case, such a direct involvement of government went completely against the prevailing UK ideology of the time. The private sector had to be involved, but the way that the railways had developed in Britain, through a system of promoters petitioning Parliament, was clearly unsuitable in the Indian context. There was no question of companies coming forward to suggest where lines were to be constructed. Dalhousie and his successors had drawn lines on the map where they wanted to see routes built and that was how the outline of the system was determined, though they may have been influenced, at times, by earlier maps put forward by private interests.

However, attracting private companies to what was, as the Court of Directors had intimated, a pretty risky enterprise, required a substantial inducement. While direct subsidy was out of the question in Victorian Britain, it was clear that no railways would be built unless the private companies were given a deal that satisfied their investors. For much of the 1840s, negotiations between government and the private companies were stuck over the precise financial arrangements and the degree of risk that the invest...