South India Railway locomotives beside a mixture of metre gauge and Indian standard gauge tracks.
There was no time to arrange for special supplies to meet the needs of the builders – any kind of rail or sleeper that was available had to be used. An extraordinary collection of hardware was soon accumulating on site. By sea from Bombay came enough rails for 50 miles of track, but sleepers for only 25; and even the rails were a mixture of new ball-headed steel and worn-out track uprooted from heaven knows where. Other lines rendered up an equally bizarre mixture of pot-sleepers, double-headed chair roads and flat-footed track – and even that could be sub-divided into many different types. Somehow all had to be put together by an inexperienced workforce to make a coherent whole. It could only work if a strict set of rules was laid down, so that the right sleepers finished up fastened by the right chairs to the right rails. The secret lay in organization: each train was to be marshalled so that rails came first, fastenings second, then sleepers. It never worked. Each train was a higgledy-piggledy mess of trucks that even after hours of shunting disgorged material that then had to be sorted by hand. The best drilled gangs in the world would have been hard pressed to make sense of this chaos; and the builders of the Kandahar Railway were not blessed with the best drilled gangs. Every time a new type of track had to be laid it was as if the whole job was being started again from scratch. It was, as the engineer James Bell’s reports make clear, all very frustrating.
A Great India Peninsula Railway locomotive with an inspection seat in the railed compartment at the front.
For instance, a man might be employed one day on boring sleepers and spiking the flat-footed rail, and the next day he would be thrown out of work on the commencement of the pot-road, until he could be taught to fit and cotter tie-bars to pots, set the pots out for the linkers, or drive keys.
It was an administrative nightmare. Just as difficult a problem was presented by the logistics of getting material moved on the last lap of the journey to the advancing railhead. Here local technology took over and proved itself to combine practicality, cheapness and a degree of sophistication. The engineer responsible for much of the work, George Moyle, described the arrangements for supplying the plate-layers:
This was done by bullock-carts, a fair number of which were obtainable in the districts through which the line passed. These carts cost complete but £1 10s., they are easily and readily repaired, and are constructed to travel over roads of the roughest description. They are built of rough-hewn jungle wood. One end of the wooden axle, which revolves, is square, and the other round, so that one wheel is fixed on the axle, and the other loose; this arrangement enables the carts to be turned about very easily. To enable these carts to be used, service roads had to be constructed on each side of the line, and carried over the numerous canals on rough timber, or floating bridges.
The materials were not the only problem: men had to be looked after as well. The original idea had been to make up a long train of wagons, each equipped with an awning, which when shunted together would make a crude tent some four hundred feet long. This was not popular, but the camping train did provide a service as mobile shop, hospital, stores shed and treasury. The men preferred their own solution:
For housing primarily the earthwork men and ultimately the platelayers, the surveyors began the erection of temporary sheds of reed mats at every 6 miles. But as they could not get enough camels or carts to carry out the mats, only two such camps were constructed. The plate-laying labourers took kindly to the mat-work sheds, and as the temper of the men was too precarious to warrant much interference with their predilections, the sheds were continually rebuilt at every 3 miles, and kept about one hundred men employed on their erection, while the renewals of mats and bamboos (about a wagon load in every train) occupied carrying capacity that could ill be spared. The mats were each about 4 feet 6 inches square. A single row of mats on edge formed the back wall of the shed, and another single row of mats laid flat formed the roof. The sheds were built with their backs to the north, and though pervious to wind and rain, they broke the force of the wind so as to make it safe for men provided with blankets to sleep under them so long as it did not rain.
Rain was certainly not the problem; water supply as the lines approached the desert was. A reservoir was established at the furthest point of the canal system, but beyond that water tanks had to be sent out by train every day. Perhaps the greatest difficulty of all was in persuading men to come and work in the desert, even when the arrangements for water supply were explained. This is not too surprising. The climate was vicious – a boiling hot day could be followed by a night so cold that ice formed on the water barrels. Other sections presented their own unique problems to the administrators, and the jungle in particular seemed to have been specially designed to create an environment where chicanery could thrive:
Throughout 45 miles the line passed through heavy jungle, which afforded excellent cover to such drivers as desired to decamp with their bullocks, shirk work, or free themselves of their load. To prevent such irregularities, it was found necessary to post patrols of irregular cavalry on both sides of the line, and along the main roads by day, and by night to form the carts into a laager presided over by sentries.
The demand on the carts was immense. It was estimated that every mile of track laid needed 600 carts. The bulk of the traffic was made up of rails, 500 per mile but only 2 per cart, and sleepers, 1600 at 8 per cart load. The wonder is that the line got built at all.
At this time the military were not entirely given over to their more obvious tasks, nor were they notably less imaginative than their civilian counterparts. R.E. Crompton was an officer in the Rifle Brigade, but steam engines were his passion. He built a small steam carriage while still at school but his boldest experiment was reserved for India. That railways were infinitely better than the bullock carts, swaying and creaking down every Indian road, was beyond dispute – but did they have to be railways! Why not build a steam engine to travel on the common roads? He proposed a ‘Government Steam Train’ to run on the newly improved Grand Trunk Road that stretched out northwards from Delhi. The engines were ordered from Ipswich, and one of these, Ravee, showed its mettle by outpacing a good train, on the adjoining railway. Crompton wrote, enthusiastically, ‘though our loaded train weighed over forty tons, we were making speeds well over twenty – probably nearer thirty – miles an hour.’ The Government Steam Train had a brief, but not inglorious, career. Most military endeavour was bent towards more serious ends, and military engineers were to face some of the sternest challenges India could present.
Work had stopped on the Kandahar Railway long before the final objective had been reached simply because the political climate had changed and it was no longer diplomatic to continue it. Then in the 1880s Russia again began to make aggressive noises and the old North-West Frontier manoeuvres began as if nothing had happened to interrupt them. The railway that had been declared wholly unnecessary a decade earlier was now an essential supply line. Diplomacy, however, was not yet ready to admit to a complete volte face – surveyors were sent out to work on the Harnai Road Improvement Scheme. There was no mention of the fact that this particular road was to be improved by the laying of steel rails. It was a feeble pretence, and the route soon had a new name: the Sind Peshin State Railway.
The military engineer’s view was uncompromising:
The line does not wind its way through smiling valleys to the breezy heights above. It traverses a region of arid rock without a tree or a bush and with scarcely a blade of grass – a country in which Nature has poured out all the climatic curses at her command. In summer the lowlands are literally the hottest corner of the earth’s surface, the thermometer registering 124°F in the shade, while cholera rages, although there is neither swamp nor jungle to provide it with a lurking place. In winter the upper passes are filled with snow and the temperature falls to 18° below zero, rendering outdoor labour an impossibility. The few inhabitants that the regi
on possesses are thieves by nature and cut-throats by profession, and regard a stranger like a gamekeeper does a hawk. Food there is none, and water is often absent for miles. Timber and fuel are unknown and, in a word, desolation writ very large is graven on the face of the land.
The footplate crew pose beside an East India Railway locomotive
The line was built through what was, in every sense, hostile territory. The route ran up the Nari River gorge to a station aptly named Tanduri, or ‘Oven’, where the only water came from a pool mainly inhabited by crocodiles. The line was regularly raided by local tribesmen, but weather and disease proved the more lethal enemies. In 1885 cholera wiped out 2000 of the 10,000 workforce.
In 1887, 19.27 inches of rain were recorded, six times the average. Then there was the terrain. The route climbed inexorably from an altitude of 433 feet at Sibi to a summit of 6537 feet. Quite the most spectacular feature along the route was the Chappar Rift, a gorge with almost vertical rock walls that lay right across the line of the track. The railway circled as though eyeing up the adversary, then dived into a tunnel, to emerge at the very edge of the chasm. Then with one mighty leap in the form of a 233-feet-high bridge it spanned the rift to disappear into another tunnel on the far side. The spot was so inaccessible that no heavy machinery could be brought in and only light drills could be used. Gunpowder and dynamite were used for blasting and the debris was all cleared away by hand. Worse was to come at Mudgorge, a spot that suited its name exactly, a desolate valley with a floor of mud, made up of an unholy mixture of shale, clay and soft stone. It was firm enough in winter but in summer turned into a sea of porridge. Thousands of feet of rail were laid only to be washed away in storms until the engineers finally decided to dig a cutting and cover it over to provide a tunnel secure from the elements. Even then the elements had the last word. In 1942, a flood roared down Chappar Rift washing away rock, scree and the railway. There was no chance of repair: there was nowhere left to put the tracks. The life of the Sind Peshin Railway was ended.
This light railway locomotive built for India is based on an original design for the Leek & Manifold Light Railway.
There are other spectacular railways in India. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, opened in 1880, climbs from the heat of the plain to the cool of the hills, rising to an altitude of over 7000 feet in 51 miles during the course of which it winds round itself in a series of loops. The most dramatic of these at Agony Point was built with a curve of just 59½ feet radius. It was almost possible for the engine of a long train to be passing on a bridge over its own brake van. Yet even this line never posed the problems set on the Sind Peshin. This was perhaps India’s engineers’ greatest challenge.
Across the border in Burma, no railway building began until the 1870s when the Rangoon to Prome line was built, largely using convict labour. Military engineers who had been working in India often found themselves being shunted across the border. India provided excellent training for the rigours of Burma. Colonel, later Sir Gordon, Hearn worked in 1899 as surveyor for a line from Mysore to Tellicherry which included that inevitable obstacle facing all west coast lines, the Ghats. In this case they consisted of hills rising to a height of 2000 feet and covered in dense forest. His predecessor, a young officer, had tried to follow a cart track, but that had been no help. The chief engineer, universally known as ‘Buff-Puff Groves, told him to strike out into the forest which numbered among its perils large numbers of lethal pit vipers. The young man said, ‘As a family man, I must decline’, and went home. Hearn was given the dubious distinction of being appointed in his place. He did not record meeting any of the deadly snakes but he met almost everything else. Wild elephants roamed the forest and during the monsoons which produced the largest proportion of the 400 inches of rain that fall in the area in a year, there was an infestation of leeches. Everyone except Hearn got malaria. And these were just additional problems tacked on to the main task of pushing a line through forest where the trees were up to 150 feet high.
In 1906, Hearn went off to Burma to work on the line from Thazi to the plateau of the southern Shan State. Work had begun two years earlier but Hearn was not happy with the route so he set off as he had in India to walk through the forest. On the first day he covered 18 miles tramping through rough country, until he found a better route through the hills. An extension of the line involved more walking, over 200 miles in three weeks with Burmese assistants. ‘The speed with which the Burmans build a shelter for the night made it unnecessary to carry a tent, but they are not industrious workers, and being sensitive to the sun’s rays would not toil when the sun was high. In fact, the only sound to be heard at mid-day was a snore!’ Noel Coward, it seems, was right about mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun. Burma presented very real difficulties to the engineer. Lieutenant Colonel L.E. Hopkins surveyed the line from Mandalay to the Chinese border near Kunlong. It rose steeply from the plain and the first thousand foot climb was so rapid that the route would have had to zigzag with no fewer than four reversing stations. The other engineer working on the same line, Lieutenant W.A. Watts-Jones, had the misfortune to inadvertently wander across the Chinese border and was executed for his mistake. In the event the difficulties proved too great and the line was never built.
India’s other near neighbour, Ceylon, proved equally difficult for railway builders. An obvious starting point was the ancient capital of Kandy in the centre of the island to the port of Colombo, the modern capital. A company was set up in 1847, and T. Drone made a survey. Nothing very much happened until 1856 when the government offered guarantees on the Indian pattern, offering to pay 6 per cent on the first £800,000 and 5 per cent on any extra expenditure. Captain W.S. Moorsom who had made his reputation on the very different Chester & Holyhead Railway was asked to report on the plans, and W.T. Doyne was appointed chief engineer. He found so many problems that he had to seek advice from two of the leading engineers of the day, first Robert Stephenson, then Sir John Hawkshaw. Even their combined talents could not solve the difficulties and, beaten, Doyne resigned. He was replaced by G.L. Molesworth who realized that nothing could be done with the original route. He surveyed a new, and altogether better, route, but before work could be started, the contract between the government and the company ran out and a brand new contract was negotiated for the construction with W.F. Faviell. It is easy to see why the engineers took so long to decide on a route, for even Molesworth’s improved line contained some hair-raising engineering. The main feature is the Kadugannawa incline, a 12-mile-long slope lifting the line almost 1500 feet to the summit. It winds up the side of the mountains, in places clinging to a ledge scarcely wider than the 5ft. 6 inch-wide tracks with drops of as much as a thousand feet over the edge. It dives through ten tunnels and numerous cuttings blasted out of the rock, and swings in giddy curves. It was opened in 1867.
This sturdy 19th century saddle tank was built to cope with the heavy work involved in climbing the Western Ghats
The next Sinhalese railway, the Kalutan, just under 28 miles long, seemed to offer far fewer difficulties apart from one river crossing. This crossing was to be carried on two lattice girder bridges joined by a short embankment on a central island. Tests had shown that the river bed was gravel, and iron cylinders were lowered into place for the piers. It was only then that the engineers discovered that the ‘solid’ foundation was no more than two feet thick, and underneath was soft sand. In the event, they had to go down to a depth of 50 feet before they met rock.
One of the most important tasks in Ceylon was the establishment of a transport route that would link the coffee plantations, mostly at an altitude of 3000-3500 feet, with Colombo, for the export market. A line was built out from the first Kandy route as far as Nawalapitiya, and the rest of the journey was on bullock carts on precipitous zigzagging roads. These roads were difficult to make and once made they were equally difficult to maintain. The heavily laden bullock carts had narrow wheels that dug ruts deep into the surface, and the loose surface wa
s then open to the elements. In an area with an average rainfall of 150 inches this spelled serious erosion. The net result was a system where carts seldom travelled more than six miles a day at exorbitant cost. By 1872 the planters had had enough and petitioned for an extension of the railway to Badulla in the heart of the coffee-growing district of Uva.
Work began under the Surveyor General’s Department with John Stoddart in charge. Once the preliminary surveys had shown that the project was feasible, full engineering surveys were undertaken, first under Alex Macnair then, from 1877, under James Mosse. It was decided early on that the gradient on the Kadugan-nawa incline should be maintained, which meant that the maximum gradient for the whole line was set at 1 in 44. This was more easily proposed than achieved. The hills of the district tend to rise up in steep spurs and are separated by deep ravines. Any line was going to have to go round more obstacles than it was to go over. Badulla is only 560 feet above the start at Kandy but to achieve a reasonable grade the line rose by 4600 feet and then fell by 4040 feet – and at 115 miles was twice as long as the old coast routes. Surveying in such conditions was nightmarish. Selecting this circuitous line in the first place was bad enough, but the detailed work was even more difficult.
Ten assistant engineers were appointed and the staff was never more than twelve. Keeping the gradient while at the same time fitting the curves as economically as possible around spur and chasm involved immense labour, and because of the nature of the terrain the engineers had to keep close together. There was never more than a pair working in one party. Mosse described a typical day:
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