Long station names in Kerala

Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have a well-deserved reputation for long place names, which I have covered here earlier. Another interesting point noticed by one of my friends is the unconventional Devanagiri fonts used in station signs in parts of South India.

Here is a random sample of station signs in Kerala. They have varying Devanagari fonts. Transliteration into Hindi is not always correct.

The longest station names in Kerala would probably be these two:

The capital:

And this smaller place:

A few more at random:

Alappuzha was earlier called Alleppey, which is uncomfortably close to Aleppo in Syria.

In the above two cases, “South” has been transliterated into Hindi while “East” has been translated.

(This is close to Tamil Nadu, so Tamil also appears).

And finally a short one.

Veli is accompanied by Kochuveli or “Small Veli”. However, Kochuveli station is a terminus and much larger than Veli station.

Hindi purists would note that sometimes the script used is not “standard”.

Smaller cities with multiple stations

We know there are many station names which include the names of cities such as Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru etc. Also the next level of cities like Agra, Kanpur and Prayagraj. Moving down the scale:

Hathras, UP:

Chennai’s suburb of Perambur:

Still in Chennai-the lesser known suburb of Pattabiram:

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Ernakulam, part of Kochi:

And this semi-ghost station which you can still visit:

Kalyani near Kolkata:

Katni in MP:

This is supposed to be illustrative and not comprehensive. Other not-so-large cities with 3 or more stations can be thought of, such as Salem, Bareilly etc

Return to Karnataka (Revised December 2018)

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.