Category:Railways

The early railway companies were UK companies operating in India. Later the British Government of India (GoI) owned the majority and either managed them directly or leased them back to private management. From circa 1925 most railways were both managed and owned by the GoI. The railways in India were subject to constant changes of ownership, amalgamations and adjustments over the years.

• Guaranteed Railways included those railway companies, formed by 1859, to which the East India Company, later the GoI, guaranteed a fixed return on capital.

• Un-guaranteed Railways were few in munber (only two were formed in the period 1850-1866 and both these were re-constituted by 1870).

• State Railways were those where the GoI exercised its right to assume ownership (which it did gradually from 1860 until 1907) oethose that it occasionally built directly. From 1907, the word State was usually dropped from the name of railways owned by the GoI . By late 1944, all the State Railways had been nationalised.

• Railways of the Indian Princely States were integrated into the newly formed Indian Railways after Independence in 1947.

Records

It is important to bear in mind that railway staff records created in India before 1947 remain in India, as do the records of railways built, owned or operated by the Indian Princely States. The records that survive today in the collections held at the British Library do so because they were originally created in the UK.

Recommended Reading

Hyde Clarke, Colonization, Defence, and Railways in our Indian Empire (London: John Weale, 1857).

J.N. Westwood, Railways of India (Newton Abbot: David & Charles Ltd, 1974) [out of print; a general history of the railways of India from pre 1840 to the 1970s.]

Ian J Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj 1850-1900 (Delhi; Oxford: OUP, 1995) [out of print; a detailed, academic examination with full bibliography.]

Ian J Kerr, Engines of Change : the Railroads that made India (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2007) [links to a Google Books preview limited to the first 35 pages].

External Links

The Imperial Gazetteer of India : New edition . . . in Council (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908-1931 [v. 1, 1909])

Indian Railways, "Evolution of Indian Railways - Historical Background," Indian Railway Administration and Finance

The Indian Railways Fan Club

Mike's Railway History "Modern transport in India"