RailEnquiry

Western Railway digs through cobwebbed archives and finds rare photographs, including one of the missing gate from 1860


    Ever wondered where Churchgate station gets its name from? Or that while there is a church close to the station, where is the ‘gate’ to warrant such a name (as Amitabh Bachchan muses in a song Yeh Hai Bambai Nagariya in 1978 film Don)?
    A quick internet search will tell you that there, indeed, was a Church Gate, named so for being a gateway to the Saint Thomas Church in the walled city of Bombay. However, not many will be able tell you what it looked like. We can.
    Recently, as part of their preparations for the 150th year commemoration of the first train arriving in the city (November 28, 1864), Western Railway officials dared to go where they hadn’t for decades – the cobweb-covered room that stores ancient Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway’s (BB&CI) monthly journals, which are now distributed as Western Railway’s Rail Darpan.
    Sifting through the BB&CI journals the Western Railway officials unearthed a goldmine of old Churchgate photographs, including the 1860 picture of the gate from which the area and the railway station get their name from.


One of the BB&CI journals from which the rare photographs of the Churchgate station were found. The WR is planning to exhibit these photographs



CHURCH GATE
An artist re-creation (left) of Church Gate’s 1860 photograph (right), which was found in an old BB&CI rail monthly. At the time of the photograph, the walled city of Bombay had a total of five gates, all built in the late 17th century. The gate opposite St Thomas Cathedral, which can be seen in the photograph, came to be known as Church Gate. “The gate was demolished in the late 19th century by recommendation of Rampart Removal Committee headed by Sir Bartle Frere, the then Governor of Bombay Presidency, to create more space near the Flora Fountain,” said historian Dr Varsha Shirgaonkar.






CHURCHGATE STATION
This 1883 photograph shows the newly built Churchgate Station – a two-platform station built in 1870 after the Backbay Station was demolished as part of city’s expansion drive. The Churchgate station ran 10 services a day as opposed to two at Backbay. At the turn of the century, the number of platforms was raised to three and the services went up to 44 a day. About 130 years later, the colonial structure has been replaced by a rectangular building, which was built in 1957. The station today sees a footfall of 15 to 18 lakh people daily



ST THOMAS CHURCH AND CHURCHGATE
The pictures above and the one below show how the areas surrounding St Thomas Church have changed over the past 150 years. As part of the 150 year commemoration of the first train to the city, Western railway officials are planning to spread awareness on this iconic railway station, and will be distributing leaflets and photo souvenirs.



AUTOMOBILE REVOLUTION
These pictures of Churchgate, which had by then become the country’s biggest rail hub, show the transition of the city from horse carts (locally known as Victorias) in 1905 to automobiles (1923). In 1928, the modern EMU engines were introduced.