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'Francis Langford O'Callaghan' name , link and text added.
Orders for a feasibility survey for the '''Bolan Pass Railway''' were first issued by the British Government in 1876. Work on the construction of railways through the Pass started in 1880 but was soon stopped after laying of 31km track due to the occurrence of famous [[Battle of Maiwand]] in the area.
<refname=prac.mac>[http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/afghanistan/elephants-carrying-locomotives-through-the-bolan-pass/ "Elephants carrying locomotives through the Bolan Pass" Scientific American, 15 August 1885, quoted at Practical Machinist‘s Antique Machinery and History Forum]; Posted 28 March 2010;Retrieved 10 Dec 2015</ref>
Work restarted in 1885 by rapidly laying a rail track in the bed of the river Bolan and finally a steam locomotive rolled into [[Quetta]] in August of 1886. The 1885 account given in Practical Machinist states ‘This railroad is of the Decauville system, formed in sections of small steel rails, which can be put down or taken up very quickly.... the locomotive made in two parts, the larger of which weighed on 3,978 pounds, the greatest weight that an elephant can carrycarry”<ref name=prac.mac/>. [[Francis Langford O'Callaghan]], posted from the [[State Railways]], was "engineer in chief for a number of demanding railway projects, surveys and constructios on India's north-west frontier ... the Bolan line through the Bolan Pass to Quetta, 1885-86" <ref>[http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/abs/10.1680/bdoceigbai.58347.457 Institution of Civil Engineers "Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland - O'Callaghan, Francis Langford "]; Retrieved on 13 Jul 2016</ref>.”
In 1889 a torrential flood destroyed the track which was first laid on the Bolan River bed. A new track was laid at a higher altitude but that also got washed away.
