You have heard of these changes:
Apart from that you had this change for Gulbarga (which is on the Central zone, not on the South Western):
And in these on the Southern zone:
Things went beyond these lists:
and finally
A lot of quiz questions could be generated.
If you are returning to Karnataka after a few years, you may find many railway stations with unfamiliar names. Here are all of the recently renamed stations for which pictures are readily available. Copyrights of the pictures rest with the respective photographers.
The only non-obvious one is Saidapur, formerly Narayanpeth Road. As the station now named Chikkamagalur was opened as recently as 2013, I am not sure if it ever had the original name of Chikmagalur. The sign at Kalaburagi is the most recent one to be changed.
Then there are a few stations which are supposed to be renamed, although no pictures of the new signboards could be seen on the net until mid-December 2018. These existing stations are:
While Shimoga Town and two nearby stations have been renamed in railway databases, no picture of the new station signs have turned up so far.
Here is a notification issued by the South Western Railway:
A few places such as MNGT and UBLS are not passenger stations. While SUBL looks like a passenger station, it does not seem to have passenger services at present.
This does not include Mangaluru Central and Mangaluru Jn which are on the Southern Railway. They have indeed been renamed and the signboards have been changed. Then there is Gulbarga/Kalaburgi which is on the Central Railway. While the new name can be seen on signs in the city, the name has NOT been changed in the databases and the signs remain unchanged.
And there are several which were renamed in the last 70 years or so, including Bowringpet, Sagara, Yedatore, Seringapatnam, Closepet and French Rocks. I may have missed out a few.
Mysore state was itself renamed to Karnataka in 1973. This was justified as the former princely state of Mysore was not the only constituent of the Kannada-speaking state, which also included Coorg (Kudagu) state and parts of the Bombay Presidency, Madras Presidency and Hyderabad state.
First we take a look at different signs at SBC station, in its various avatars as Bangalore City, Bengaluru City and finally Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna (Bengaluru Station). Also don’t ask why the S got into SBC.
But the average Bangalorean might prefer to stick to calling it Majestic, like the way Hyderabadis stick to Nampalli, Amdavadis to Kalupur and Banarsis to Cantt (well, it was officially known as Benares Cantt until the 1940s).
At the other end of the line 138 km away we have Mysore (now Mysuru):
But the line between these cities has seen more than its share of renaming. Let us first look at an Indian Bradshaw entry from 1935:
The reproduction is not too good, and the mileage is not visible in this scan. Odd things you can see here are Maddur listed as a junction (though no branch line from there is listed in this Bradshaw or anywhere else). And several place names do not appear in present timetables.
Here is an extract from an official website showing the timings of a passenger train between Bengaluru and Mysuru:
Even this train does not stop at a few stations such as Krishnadevaraya Halt (5 km from SBC), Palahalli Halt (between S and NHY) and Mysuru New Goods Terminal (4 km before MYS) which is a pure goods station.
(Palahalli is apparently not on the present alignment but is still mentioned in railway documents).
Note the rare one-letter codes for Yeliyur (Y) and Shrirangapatna (S)
Apart from the changes to the names of SBC and MYS, we also note:
Closepet is now Ramanagaram (possibly it had been named after a British official)
French Rocks is now Pandavapura
Seringapatnam is now Srirangapattana (changing the simplified spelling of the British).
Other points of interest: the 1935 timetable shows 13 intermediate stations. The present slow passenger train stops at 19, while at least 3 more are known to exist.
Of course, there has been progress on this line. It was converted to broad gauge by the mid-90s and electrification continues at a snail’s pace-apparently it is complete up to Mandya. There is now a Shatabdi from Chennai along with numerous trains to different corners of the country. Even the former single track MG line is almost completely doubled apart from a short stretch outside Shrirangapattana where Tippu’s armoury building is being bodily shifted to make way for the new line, as you can see here:
Thanks to Raghavendra Rao and Sandeep Mohan for useful updates.
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