Hauling about the Madras city on trains

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People waiting to board the suburban EMU at the Saidapet railway station in March 1982. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

Trains in India first came to Madras. Period. Long before that famed train service between Boribunder and Thane, we had a train that hauled stone, from Red Hills and was operational in the 1830s and designed by that brilliant engineer Arthur Cotton. When commercial railway services were begun, Madras was connected in 1856 to Walajah Road. The terminus in the city was at Royapuram, which is why we still have a Northern Terminus Road there. All this was for long-distance connections.

Requirement for the suburban railway line began in what can only be considered as a repeat of what prompted Cotton to design one in the 1930s. With the harbour developing early in the 1900s to its full capacity, Sir Francis Spring, the dynamic Chairman of the Port Trust decided to link it to the railway line. It helped that he was a former railway man himself. The South Indian Railway was connected to the harbour. Within the premises, India’s smallest railway line — the Port Trust Railway would take over.

Chennai / Tamil Nadu / India / Madras Week / Made of Chennai / railway

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