Celebrating Howrah

It began life as a mud hut. Now Howrah Station is celebrating its centenary

Howrah Station, the historical landmark that was once described as the "gateway to the east", turned 100 this December 1.

It's an important milestone, though there are older and grander buildings in Kolkata itself like the Writers' Buildings, or the GPO; and even among railway stations of the Raj-era, the Gothic extravaganza of Bombay's Victoria Terminus far overshadows the Romanesque functionality of Howrah Station.

It must be said, though, that fixing on December 1, 1905 as the date when Howrah Station came into being is to give the station a more recent vintage than it can justly claim.

It was on August 15, 1854 that the first train chugged out of Howrah, 16 months after the first train in India ran from Bombay to Thane on April 16, 1853. Howrah missed out on that distinction owing to an accident of history.

As the seat of British power in India at the time, Calcutta would have got the first railway in India. The ship carrying the locomotive from England to Calcutta lost its way after turning at Cape Comorin and landed up in west Australia, while another one carrying the carriages sank just short of Calcutta.

"After these twin disasters, the British did not take any chances and fixed on Bombay instead," says S Majumdar who, along with two others, has penned Vibrant Edifice - The Saga of Howrah Station, which was commissioned by Eastern Railways on the occasion of the centenary celebrations.

Historians agree that Howrah Station began life rather humbly as a mud hut, which later became a shed with a tin roof and one platform. By the end of the century, it had grown to three platforms, so small that five coaches extended outside.

Passenger traffic too had grown with the expansion of the railway network, especially after Calcutta was connected to Delhi in 1866. The present grand station, which became an imperative after Bengal Nagpur Railway laid a connecting line to Howrah, came up on the site of an orphanage and a church which had been abandoned after a plague epidemic in Howrah.

Not much is known of why Halsey Ricardo was chosen to design the building, or indeed who he was. What there are, as Majumdar found while researching for the book, are 68 elaborate ink sketches of Ricardo's vision - with the elevations marked out in colour detail, or on a blueprint, and every single minutiea of the floor plan of the station and its associated buildings.

Eastern Railways has got the designs digitally cleaned and scanned, and will display them at the Regional Railway Museum that's coming up as part of the centenary celebrations. But what's truly amazing is that Ricardo never came to Calcutta.

There are also plans to get UNESCO World Heritage status for the structure, a distinction three railway properties in India have been accorded - Victoria Terminus, Darjeeling Himalayan Railways and most recently, Nilgiri Railways.

Eastern Railways has already sent a proposal to the Railway Board. If it does get World Heritage status, it'll be a feather in the cap of a structure stymied by its own success.

With a daily traffic of 75 long-distance and 300 local trains and 10 lakh passengers, Howrah Station has reached saturation point. In 1993, four platforms were added with the building of the new complex; the foundation stone for two more were laid in October this year, taking the total number to 22.

But there is a limit to the number of additions that can be made, with the river on one side and Howrah Bridge's restricted capacity to handle any more traffic. All the new trains will now be diverted to Chitpur Station. Clearly, at 100, Howrah Station needs a break.