The iconic yellow taxis standing outside the Howrah Railway Station which is the oldest station and largest railway complex in India.
Howrah railway station is the oldest station and largest railway complex in India. It is one of the four intercity railway stations serving the city of Kolkata, the others being Sealdah Station, Shalimar Station and Kolkata railway station. The terminal station is located on the west bank of the Hooghly River, linked to Kolkata by Howrah Bridge. With 23 platforms, it has the highest train-handling capacity of any railway station in India; and is one of the busiest railway stations in terms of passenger volume per day.
Initial plans for the first Howrah station were submitted by George Turnbull the Chief Engineer of the East Indian Railway Company on 17 June 1851. In January 1852, it became clear that the government authorities would not sanction the purchase of sufficient land nor the necessary waterfrontage despite remonstrations from Turnbull that the terminus would grow enormously. In May 1852, the detailed station plans were the major work of him and his team of engineers. In October four tenders for building the station were received varying from 190,000 to 274,526 INR against an estimate of 250,000 INR.
Due to a great increase of traffic, a new station building was proposed in 1901. The new station was designed by the British architect Halsey Ricardo. It was brought into service on 1 December 1905. This building is the current Howrah station building. The station had 15 platform tracks.
It was expanded in the 1980s with the addition of 8 platform tracks in an area to the south of the station which previously had a parcels terminal, bringing the track count up to 23. At the same time a new Yatri Niwas (transit passenger facility) was built south of the original head house.
Trains from this station serve the Kolkata urban area via the Kolkata suburban railway, the state of West Bengal, and most major cities of India. Its twenty-three platforms handle over six hundred trains each day, serving more than a million passengers, making it the one of the busiest railway platforms in India . It is served by two zones of the Indian Railways: Eastern Railway and South Eastern Railway.
The station is operated by the Eastern Railway.
South Eastern Railway was previously known as the Bengal-Nagpur Railway (BNR, derisively called "Be Never Regular" because of its notorious tardiness) which built the truck route from Kolkata to Nagpur connecting to Great Indian Peninsular (GIP) route to Mumbai and the trunk route to Vijayawada Junction connecting with the GIP route to Chennai. Eastern Railway was previously known as East Indian Railway (EIR) which built the trunk route from Kolkata to Delhi and beyond.
Four of India's most important trunk rail routes end in Howrah. They are Howrah-Delhi, Howrah-Mumbai, Howrah-Chennai and Howrah-Guwahati. Today there are 23 platforms in Howrah Junction /Central. The first Rajdhani Express in the country ran between Howrah and New Delhi in 1969. Eastern Railway handles trains for northern, north-western, north-eastern & eastern India through Barddhaman line & Katwa line. South Eastern Railway handles trains for southern, south-western, south-eastern, western, and central India through the Medinipur Line. The Kanthi line is also serving long distance intrastate trains.
The Eastern Railway and South Eastern Railway section are connected by two links, one is Lilua-Tikiapara link, and other is Rajchandrapur/Dankuni-Bankura link, currently used by only goods trains. There are proposals to introduce passenger train service on these two links to facilitate quick travel between the two sections avoiding Howrah.
Source: Wikipedia
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