The Western Line. Begins from Churchgate, ends at Dahanu Rd. Of course there are intermediate local termini, like Dadar, Bandra, Borivali, Virar to name a few. These are stations with a 'make believe' dead end which the locals cannot go past. The locals complete their duty of transporting its longest accompanying passengers to its own destination, lets them deboard, and heads back to its origin station after a while waiting in front of that 'dead end'. Even Dahanu, the northern terminus, faces that situation, since the Indian Railway line extends much further than the suburban line. It is the southern terminus, Churchgate that gets that one unique honour. No rail line going past it. Here there is a real dead end! But that wasn't always the case. For, once the line went 2 km beyond it, all the way to Colaba! And Colaba maintained that honour for 57 years!
You may find that surprising, but its true. And the story of its existence, is amusing, and a pleasure to both read and narrate!
Lets get back to the mid 1860s. The Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway (BB&CIR) had just recently extended its line from Ahmedabad to Bombay in 1864. The tale of this happenstance is an interesting one in its own. (If you don't know, you may read this article I wrote last month-). But today, lets discuss the events that lay ahead. When the first train service began between Bombay and Ahmedabad from 28th November 1864, the train terminated at Grant Rd station. A local train service was introduced the following year on the 1st of November. This service ran from Grant Rd, to Bassein Rd. At the same time, several improvements were done to the intermediate stations along the suburban line.
But, along with all this, one more project was being executed, undertaken by the Bombay Backbay Reclamation Company. It, as the name suggests, was assigned the task of Reclaiming a part of the Backbay (that body of water between Malabar Hill and Colaba). Why? After all, BB&CI had to extend its line into the heart of Bombay City, and then to the cotton hub of Colaba. And that heart was near the erstwhile fort of Bombay, close to today's Churchgate. Possible routes were proposed and debated upon for long. The line reached Grant Rd in 1864, but the path just ahead was still under discussion in 1863. One option, as suggested by Colonel P.T. French, the Chairman of BB&CIR himself, was to let the line pass through the regions of Sonapur, Girgaon, and the Esplanade. But Bombay's commissioner of Police, Charles Forjett soon made a report, highlighting the impracticality of the proposition. The issue lay in the fact that purchasing patches of land in the aforementioned areas would cost more than a quarter Million Pounds sterling, which was plain expensive, and hence, what the Railway Department refused to comply with. The Chairman then found to himself only one practical option, that was to reclaim a portion of the Backbay. And this the Railway Department found feasible.
Then there were more discussions, more protests, more letters; but the plan went ahead. The Backbay Reclamation Company began the first scheme of Backbay's reclamation history. The BB&CI too got the task of supplying the necessary ballast, with its ballast trains running from Santacruz. The scheme went ahead, but then came a shock. The American Civil War ended.
With the Civil War's advent in 1861, the British cotton supply was in danger. The British started to look at other places to procure cotton for its industry. India was one such place. Now, railways had been introduced in Bombay, and it was a port city. The result was that, in the duration of the war, Bombay profited a heck of lot, and Bombay became a cotton hub as never before. But with the end of the war, ended the monopoly. Several companies were liquidated, and one of these was the reclamation company. This was in 1865. The Government took over the project, but the result was less grander than anticipated. Only a thin patch of land, just wide enough for the BB&CI to lay its line could be reclaimed. The Bombay Backbay station was opened here by 1866, primarily to serve ballast trains bringing in supplies for the reclamation project. The Railway then started regular trains from the station by 1867, and then continued extending the line, reaching Churchgate by 1870. But as for the Reclamation project, for now at least, it was done and dusted.
Although Bombay could not get much extra space due to the cut shorted reclamation, BB&CIR had just gotten enough. It had now established a foothold in the city, and was ready to jumpstart. And so it did, albeit again with some difficulties!
The BB&CI was now quite close to Colaba, the cotton hub. It just had to get there. And so, it requested for an authorisation for extension. The Government of Bombay gave permission, but on one condition. The condition was that the company, in an event of further reclamation schemes, or public benefit undertakings in the region, would move, i.e clear this railway route till Colaba. This condition was agreed to, and then, the year being 1873, BB&CI had achieved its goal of establishing itself in Colaba. Passenger traffic from the station was commenced by October 1st, 1873, and finally one could catch a train at Colaba, and travel all the way till Ahmedabad! And besides this added luxury for the passengers, BB&CI could too benefit a ton from transporting cotton, with its line stretching 310 miles (quite exactly 500 km) to Ahmedabad.
On the Suburban Line, by now there were 24 locals each day (8 Bandra, 3 Andheri, and 1 Virar). And Progress continued. By 1888, 9,865,000 people had used the service to their benefit, and after 4 years, there were 4 Virar, 1 Borivali, and 27 Bandra locals each way per day.
But this surge in popularity came at a price. If the service receives demand, it ought to be expanded. Expansions were certainly done, but not all was achieved. One curious such problem occurred at the temporary Colaba station. About mid 1880s, the station handled 52 passenger trains every day, and due to this, there would remain no space for standing trains at the station. These could only be occupied at Grant Rd, and even this would mean three daily passenger trains to be brought back empty from the latter station to Colaba. On top of this, the Locomotive shed was at Parel, and hence Locomotives too had to run on this line to Colaba. And all this on just two tracks. The situation was a darn traffic mess! And the station too was quite cramped, which led to the following situation: It was often that on the arrival of a passenger/express train, that, soon after it would be shunted (taken away), to make space for an incoming local train. This would occur, even before the passengers of those long distance trains had the opportunity to take their luggage out!
Sure enough, came suggestions soon after. There were thoughts that the provision of additional sidings at Marine Lines and conversion of the station into a terminus for all long distance trains would curb the issue. The Government assigned a committee in 1888 to find solutions. The committee discouraged the aforementioned suggestion, for, this would mean consumption of the already limited space available for public recreation initiatives. The Committee hence suggested the expansion of the Colaba station, to cope with all the issues.
BB&CIR was therefore provided a plot of land between Wodehouse Bridge, and the Lower Colaba Road. The Government sanctioned an amount of Rs.4,94,843 in April 1893, after plans and estimates for the station were submitted. And then came a magnificent station certainly ten fold grander than its predecessor. It was a new station, and this station was named Colaba Terminus, and it was opened to service on 7th April 1896.
The station building was a piece of art. The façade of the station, made of stone, faced southward, and so did the station's entrance. The entrance was below a balcony, similar to that at Bandra Railway station, along with a porch for carriages. If we look at the building from the front, it was almost symmetrical, the symmetry being broken by one high tower with a pitched tiled roof on the left. Barring this, the building façade was symmetric along the balcony, there being three rectangular portions with a gable like top, the balcony being located in the central rectangle. Inside the building, were waiting rooms, an open ticket counter, and other offices. The principal columns were ornamented with iron work made from old rails. A brick wall sheltered the passengers on the Wodehouse Road side, from rains. The station was lightened with incandescent light bulbs, functioning throughout day and night. A footbridge was further constructed on the northern end of the platforms. The terminal station itself had three 500 ft (152 m) long platforms, hosting five, numbered-platforms. This was because the west-most platform hosted only one, while the other two hosted two numbered-platforms each. The yard of the station was also quite large, hosting two main carriage sidings, the West, and the East Carriage sidings. The East Carriage sidings themselves went a long way, forming a sort of a C-curve, with the southern part extended till the nearby docks. The yard further had a Station Cabin, some extra sidings, some lines assigned for Goods traffic, and most importantly, a Turntable. All the lines of the station yard, including the ones that catered to the platforms, eventually converged to just two lines, that arrived from Churchgate, one each for Down and Up lines.
Such a beauty was the new Colaba Terminus station. The station continued its service well throughout, even into the 1900s. Developments were soon to follow. Between the station and the nearby Wodehouse bridge, track circuiting was completed by 1913. In the 1910s, during a period of several station remodelling schemes, facilities at several stations were improved. Some stations covered under the schemes were- Borivali, Virar (1913), Grant Rd (1915), and Bandra, Mahim (1917,1920). Colaba's station too went under consideration, since the yard and the signalling equipment were inadequate to deal with the traffic. Keep in mind that crowds were growing profoundly in these regions, and also were the passengers, around this time. Hence, Colaba Terminus' remodeling scheme too was approved by 1920.
But another thing happened in 1920. And was quite in irony to the just mentioned development. The Bombay Government, that year, issued a notice to the Railway Company. That notice was an order to the BB&CI to relinquish its rail section, between Churchgate and Colaba, in order to remove obstacles in view of an upcoming second phase of Backbay Reclamation. And, as many authors like to point out, was on the very plot of land the government had itself reclaimed to make the rail extension to Colaba possible. And now, a department of just that government was asking to shelve that section out.
Well, BB&CI had agreed to give away the reclaimed plot in case of such a project in future, all the way back in 1873, when it was to extend its line till here. No ifs, no buts, they had to give the land away. But it wasn't as easy as that. Colaba had been established as BB&CI Railway's terminal station. It couldn't just demolish it now and cede the land to the Government. It just had to first establish another Terminus.
Such a terminal was then planned near Bellasis Rd, and a new station was to be built there. Besides this main station, a suburban station was to be constructed just beside to provide ease of connectivity. This was to be the Bombay Central Station, or today's Mumbai Central. The Agent (General Manager) of BB&CI, Sir Ernest Jackson laid the foundation stone of the station on 11 March 1928, and the station was ready by 18 December 1930. For a moment, BB&CI had two grand Terminus stations!
Colaba Terminus' story was about to end. But the story didn't end that dull. When the BB&CI line was electrified, the first Electric Local train on the line ran from Colaba to Borivali on 5th January 1928. The same year, on 1 September 1928, the Frontier Mail was inaugurated from here. It would regularly depart from the Terminus throughout the station's remaining years, except during winter months, when it'd depart from the Bombay Port Trust Railway's Ballard Pier Mole Railway station. This train was reputed to be India's fastest, and among the most punctual trains.
But that was more or less the ending, and its replacement had already been ready in December 1930. Its purpose was fulfilled, and so was its life. The last local train departed from the station, heading toward Bandra on 31st December, 1930. The station then closed for good, on the New year's Day of 1931.
Such was the tale of Bombay's once Southernmost station. Full of crises, but full of exciting times. In the end, Churchgate was made the Terminal again, as it was in 1870. This process was completed by 1933. Colaba just vanished in thin air, just out of public memory. Yet it served well, as BB&CI's most wonderful Terminal station, that too for 57 whole years.
Links and Resources
- The Bombay Local, and Suburban Train Service: BB&CI Annual Issue, Dec 1923- A 100yr old booklet, with history of the railway company in the first 20 years of the 20th century. Also contains diagrams of Colaba Terminus remodeling scheme.
- A Century of Suburban Service: West rail News, 1961- A post independence issue, highlighting the history of British Bombay, along with that of the railway company. Has pictures of Colaba station building and Yard.
- Once upon a time, there was a railway station called Colaba: WR CPRO Ravinder Bhaskar- A small article by Western railway's Public Relations Officer, about Colaba's rail Terminus.
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