Recently a Madras suburban timetable of the 1950s (probably 1958) surfaced on the IRFCA forum. This had a page showing the arrivals and departures of long-distance trains at Madras Central and Madras Egmore:
No Rajdhanis, Shatabdis or Durontos, although there are Janata Expresses. See how many of these trains have survived, often with new names.
Madras itself has become Chennai. Stations such as Waltair, Bezwada, Arkonam, Bangalore, Jalarpet, Bombay, Mangalore, Conjeevaram, Madura, Trivandrum and Tinnevelly have long been renamed, while no train has run to Dhanushkodi since December 1964. Vizagapatnam Town station also closed around the same time.
Let us not talk about the present name of Madras Central.
Note the Tuticorin Express which came to grief near Ariyalur in 1956.
(Thanks to S. Aravind for providing this piece of history).
abn397 