Home Feature GETTING THESE HILLS A TRAIN

GETTING THESE HILLS A TRAIN

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A collapsed Tramway Tunnel. Pic courtesy: Sunil Silwal

By: Ganesh Saili

Why couldn’t we get a train to these hills? After all, it reached Darjeeling in 1881, Ooty in 1902, Shimla in 1903, and Matheran in 1907. Loose gravel, slippery shale, crumbly limestone, and weak dolomite above Rajpur left our planners with no choice.

‘The Devil is in the details! Dive deep! There are no shortcuts to glory!’ Kailash Nath Mehrotra, our gifted teacher at St. George’s College, would always remind us.

The first train chugged into Dehradun from Hardwar in 1900 and the proposal was to carry the line to Jakhan, but ‘owing to the short-sighted views of the Rajpur hotel-keepers,’  who petitioned against the railway being brought so near. Add to that the outrage of ‘the do-gooders-brigade’, about the destruction of amenities in Dehradun if the train passed through it, which halted the line. By the time the error was admitted, the train had been missed.

Signs of the Times. Pic courtesy: Pramod Kapoor

The second option was a tram. ‘Unless the Indian and Colonial Development Company can execute their project for an electric tramway from Dehra to Mussoorie, it certainly would be desirable to extend the railway to the foot of the hills near Rajpur.’

In my growing-up years, I fell for the gossip and was led to believe the imprints of an abandoned railway line lay somewhere along the old bridle path. But we had the bull by the tail. ‘A tramway from the Toll Bar onto the Oak Grove school spur is encountered the one bad bit that has for the last decade and more daunted the spirit of enterprise.

‘The present engineers propose, in addition to using a rack section, to overcome the difficulty by tunnelling through the loose shale hill.

‘Across the proposed tunnels, one would be deposited at the Oak Grove spur, where the line would continue by easy gradients to serve the Railway School, Jharipani, St. George’s College, Barlowganj, and Mussoorie proper before terminating near the Himalaya Club in Landour.’

‘A defanged tiger among hyenas’ Maharaja Ripudaman
Singh of Nabha.

Suitable stations were planned along the route near large estates, important crossroads, schools, etc.’ Mackinnon’s Guide spells it out. The whole journey from Dehra Dun Station to the Landour Terminus, including stops, would have taken under two hours. ‘A truly delightful prospect for holidaymakers as well as austere, elderly, infirm, or extra rotund maidens and men coming up to the hills.’

In 1919, along came Belti Shah Gilani from Gujranwala (now in Pakistan) and floated the Dehra Dun-Mussoorie Tramways. Among his many investors was Maharaja Ripudaman Singh of Nabha, a staunch nationalist with ties to the Swaraj Movement. He had refused coronation by the Viceroy; he had refused to send Nabha’s troops to bolster the war effort, and he generally refused to play ball. The last straw for the Empire was a donation he had made to the Tilak Memorial Library. He turned into ‘a defanged lion among hyenas’, after his crafty Accountant-General (bribed with a job for his feeble-minded son) wrongly advised the Maharaja to invest ten lakh rupees in the tramway.

The funds were there; the permissions were there, with Upper Rajpur de-notified and placed under the Mussoorie Municipal Board. Then the bubble burst. I have the niggling feeling (and it refuses to go away) that it was part of a more sinister plan by the Empire to strip him of his rank and his titles before finally deposing him. After abdicating in 1923, his eldest son, Pratap Singh, became the sovereign in 1928. Exiled to Kodaicanal, aged 59 years, the Maharaja passed away in 1942.

In Dehradun, allegations had it that the company directors had diverted funds for personal use and cases were registered. The company went into liquidation in March 1926. Belti Shah was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to five years for fraud. The local press went to town screaming ‘Guilty’ Shah Gilani.’

Our tramway was stillborn. Fortunately, by then, the motor road had snaked past Bhatta and reached the bus terminus at Douglas Dale Spring.

We hear that soon, one of the world’s longest ropeways will deposit you in a mere fifteen minutes at Shipton Court near the Library.

By that hangs another story for some other day.

Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. As the author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.