The oldest fast trains in India, and other topics for fans of the Indian Railways

Some generalities to start with. There is no firm answer to the question “Which was India’s first long-distance train?” The present Railway administration seems to have decided that the Punjab Mail from Mumbai CSTM to Ferozepur is the oldest, having started its run from Bombay VT  to Lahore in 1912.

While the dates of opening of different sections of track are well documented by the railways (with a full directory up to 1964), the date of introduction of trains is not so clear unless one looks at the old timetables, which are generally not accessible to the public. Anyway, some of the oldest trains would include:

Bombay-Poona Mail: probably soon after the line was opened in 1863. Was known to be running in 1869. However, the name vanished around 1971 when it became the Sahyadri Express to Kolhapur with the same timings between Bombay and Poona (which were yet to become Mumbai and Pune)

Madras-Bangalore Mail: probably soon after the line between these cities was completed in 1864. At that time it would have run between Royapuram (then the only terminus in Madras) and Bangalore Cantt (likewise for Bangalore). It would have started running from Madras Central after 1873 and from Bangalore City after 1882. It still runs on this route, although the stations are now Chennai Central and KRS Bengaluru.

Then there would be the Kalka Mail, which started as the Delhi-Calcutta Mail in 1866 soon after the last link of the Yamuna bridge was opened. At that time it would have run by the Sahibganj loop which was the only connection between Calcutta and the North then. It would have started running via the “main line” between Asansol and Kiul after 1871 and via the Grand Chord after 1906. And it would have been extended to Kalka after 1891. So this is also one of the oldest fast trains of India, despite the numerous changes of route. It is still running between Howrah and Kalka by the Grand Chord.

The Delhi-Karnal-Ambala-Kalka line was opened in 1891. Possibly the Kalka Mail ran via Delhi-Meerut-Saharanpur-Ambala at one time, as this longer route  had more commercial and military significance.

I am not actually sure when it started running via the Grand Chord, as that covered relatively unpopulated areas compared to the main line via Patna. This can only be answered definitely by seeing timetables from 1906 onwards. In the 1930 timetable of the North Western Railway the abstract timetables show it running via Patna. But in the 1935 Bradshaw it is running via Gomoh on the Grand Chord, where Netaji is supposed to have boarded it in 1941.

In the same way many of the older Mail trains would have started running soon after the routes were completed. Some which must  have started running in the 19th century include the Madras/Mangalore, Madras/Bombay, Bombay/Calcutta via Allahabad. By 1910 the Madras/Howrah and Bombay/Howrah via Nagpur would have started.

Some like the Punjab Mail from Bombay (1912), Frontier Mail (1928), and Deccan Queen (1930) are well documented, although the second one became the Golden Temple Mail in 1996.

The Delhi-Madras route never had a mail train. The last link between Balharshah and Kazipet was completed in the late 1920s in what was then the Nizam’s State Railway. This Grand Trunk Express ran for the first few months from Mangalore to Peshawar, then for a few months from Mettupalaiyam to Lahore and then settled to its long-term route from Madras Central to Delhi.

By the 1950s most trains from the West and South started terminating at New Delhi which had been a tiny station until it was expanded to be a station fit for a capital. Ultimately the GT  was extended to Delhi Sarai Rohilla a few years ago. A number of long distance trains suffered the same fate due to the lack of stabling lines near New Delhi and Delhi Jn.

And Sarai Rohilla is one of the most inaccessible rail terminuses in India’s major cities, though it gets good competition from Kolkata Terminus and (to a lesser extent) from LTT and Bandra Terminus in Mumbai. However, unlike in Mumbai and Kolkata many of these trains also have stops at New Delhi or Delhi Jn, so it does not affect reserved passengers that much. Those going towards Rajasthan and Gujarat may prefer the 2-minute halt at Delhi Cantt to the inaccessible starting point.

Most of the trains mentioned above have separate articles on Wikipedia and other sites like irfca.org . Some sources are reliable, others are not. Anyone who says that the Punjab Mail of 1912 is the oldest train is clearly wrong.

To come back to the original question, the oldest long-distance train running on (almost) the same route throughout the years is almost certainly the Chennai/Bengaluru Mail, though the management of the CR and the NR would not like to hear that.

A footnote: some old timetables of India (including pre-1947 India) can be seen here:

http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/timetables/

It is not very systematic as bits and pieces have been added by a large number of people. If you expect to see the full all-India timetables for a particular year you will be disappointed. Some attempt has been made to give the full timetables for a particular company or zone, for instance the NWR from a 1943 Bradshaw:

http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/timetables/nwrtt/1943/

and the Jodhpur railway, 2 pages from the same Bradshaw:

http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/timetables/Jodhpur1-1943.jpg.html

http://www.irfca.org/gallery/Heritage/timetables/Jodhpur2-1943.jpg.html

There are also a few pages from the NWR of 1930 and Assam Bengal Railway of 1929. But basically you have to find your own way in this site.

Another section of the irfca site which may interest you is:

http://www.irfca.org/~shankie/famoustrains/famtraindqn.htm

although this was prepared over a decade ago and all the information may not be accurate.

Some railfans have acquired soft and hard copies of old timetables by various means over the years. If you expect them to put up the scans of the full timetables of the past, it will not happen because either the books are bound in such a way that scanning is difficult, or the pages are too yellow and/or fragile, or they are the result of multiple photocopies and are not very legible (the ones mentioned above are examples of this).

Anyway, I have been requested to summarize the timings of the Kalka Mail and Frontier Mail over the years. Probably the best you can expect is a summary of timings at some important stations retyped here.

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Famous Indian trains of the past-and what happened to them (Part 1)

In the “romantic” old days of the Indian Railways, the most important trains in each jurisdiction had low numbers-and often the most important trains were the pair 1 and 2 which were invariably Mail trains. We take a look back to the year 1976 (when the system was quite similar to today’s, except that the number of zones was less) and see what happened to the trains numbered 1 and 2 then. Some are still important (if not the most important trains on their route) while others have become quite unimportant.

These were: 1/2 Bombay VT/Howrah Mails via Nagpur (also called the Calcutta Mails via Nagpur) 1/2 Howrah/Kalka Mails via Delhi 1/2 Lucknow/Gauhati Avadh Tirhut Mails (metre gauge) 1/2 Madras/Mangalore Mails 1/2 Guntur/Secunderabad Golconda Expresses 1/2 Bombay Central/Ahmedabad Gujarat Mails 1/2 Ahmedabad/Delhi Mails (though renumbered 201/202 between Rewari and Delhi), metre gauge and even 1/2 Gondia/Jabalpur Expresses on the narrow gauge. We can see that all of these trains had been around for a long time (probably since the 19th century) except for the Golconda Express which was started by the new South Central Railway in the late 1960s. Over the years cities and stations were renamed, the train numbering changed to four digits for most long-distance trains around 1990 and then to 5 digits for all trains in 2010. To begin with, we look at the 1/2 Bombay/Howrah Mails as they were in 1976:

At that time this was the top train on this route as the Geetanjali Express was yet to start. It had the classical Mail timings of the olden days, leaving at night and reaching in the early morning (though in this case there was an intervening day). In 2014, this pair of trains has the rather uninteresting numbers 12809/12810. Those more familiar with the railways can deduce that this pair of trains are superfast (for what it is worth) and “belong” to the South Eastern Railway. The timings then and now:

The entire route is electrified now (about half was electrified in 1976) and timings have come down by about 2 hours. There are other faster trains on the route such as the Geetanjali and Duronto, but the Mail is still considered prestigious by the older generation-particularly in the eastern part of the country.

Now for the 1/2 Howrah/Kalka Mails:

At that time the Rajdhani had been running for several years but was still considered to be too extravagant for most travellers. The Poorva Expresses (often called the AC or Deluxe) were gradually becoming popular. The entire route between Delhi and Howrah was electrified around this time. By 2014, the 1/2 Mails had become 12311/12312, meaning that they were superfast and run by the Eastern Railway. These were the timings:

As we can see, they take almost exactly the same time between Delhi and Howrah. In the mean time there are two Rajdhanis daily which have attracted the upmarket travellers besides two Durontos. So the Kalka Mail has moved down the pecking order although, as in the previous case, the older travellers from eastern India still have high regard for the trains.

On the metre gauge, one of the longest hauls was on the 1/2 Avadh Tirhut Mails between Lucknow (LJN) and Guwahati. Even in the late 70s, there was no broad gauge link from Northern India to the North-East. So this Mail and its poor cousin the 15/16 Lucknow/Guwahati Express were the only links on this route. There was also the Assam Mail which ran on the broad gauge from New Delhi to Barauni, which connected with the metre gauge Mail all the way to Dibrugarh Town.

But over the years it lost its prestige with the coming of the broad gauge on the NER and NFR. By the 90s it became the Avadh Assam Express (demoted from Mail status) was running on BG on practically the same route up to New Jalpaiguri. It was then extended westwards to Delhi and finally to Lalgarh near Bikaner. Eastward it was extended to New Tinsukia. Worse still, it was not even a superfast but merely the 15909/15910 Avadh Assam Express. The 37-hour run between Lucknow and Guwahati (formerly Gauhati) had been reduced to 33 hours. Otherwise, time had not been kind to this train as it was involved in one of India’s worst rail accidents in 1999. (At that time it was running between Delhi and Guwahati). Here is the timetable of the old Mail and of its extended run in 2014. Note that it reaches its destination on the 4th day and has one of the longest runs of any passenger service in India.

To conclude this section we have the 1/2 Madras/Mangalore Mail. I am not sure how old it is as the timetables of the 1930s and 40s show only the Malabar Express on this route. By the 1960s the Mail appeared in its present form. Later the Malabar Express started running from Cochin (and still later further south from Trivandrum) to Mangalore while the 1/2 Mail got a companion West Coast Express by the mid-60s.

Here are the timings in 1976 and of its avatar of 2014, when it had become the 12601/12602 Chennai/Mangaluru Mail (fortunately still superfast) with these timings:

Here the 18-hour run has been reduced to 16 hours although a fair portion of the route is not electrified.

We will take up a few more “number ones” in the next section, which would be up on Aug 11.