Sara Train Ferry

The Sara Train Ferry was the link on the rail route from Calcutta to North Bengal and Assam. The Ferry across the Ganges was eliminated when the Hardinge Bridge was opened in 1915.

The broad gauge(BG), Eastern Bengal State Railway’s main line from Calcutta, after 119 miles, reached the southern bank of the river at Damukdia , from where the passengers were ferried to Sara Ghat on the opposite bank, whence to board a metre gauge(MG) train that ran further north via Santahar and Parbatipur.

The Sara Train Ferry also transported goods wagons on special flat barges. The transhipment of goods is a more difficult problem, and the varying levels of the river and a break in gauge do not make it any easier. But a great proportion of the extensive goods traffic on this line crosses the river in trucks carried on specially constructed flats towed over by paddle steamers. It is an expensive system and as far back as 1889 the administration of the Eastern Bengal Railway(EBR) put forward a proposal for bridging the Ganges at Sara.

Nineteen years later, after much discussion as to the site of the bridge, a scheme was sanctioned. Work on the bridge itself was begun in 1911, and the Hardinge Bridge finally opened to traffic in 1915.