Image Credit: 1868 Postcard supplied by Dr D K Drummond

This event is both an in-person and on-line event. No need to register – just come along or click this zoom link to join on-line.

Governor-General James Andrew Broun, Marquess of Dalhousie, is often referred to as the ‘Father of Railways in India.’ Through his Minutes of 1850 and 1853, Dalhousie argued that ‘he alone’ was responsible for determining early railway development there. A further important idea, that Dalhousie and his Minutes ‘established the basic blue print that was to guide the early decades of railway development in India’, is also argued. (Ian J Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj, OUP, New Delhi, p.26.)

This talk will ask if these claims are true. After first of all considering who Governor-General Dalhousie and his famous Minutes were, it will turn to explore how the framing of these was influenced very significantly by railway promoters [e.g. Sir Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (1808-1895)], consulting civil engineers [E Baker, the consulting engineer of the Government of India], resident engineers [George Turnbull, Chief Engineer of the East Indian Railway Company], surveyors and contractors, as they surveyed and constructed the earliest railways in India. Work on some of these rail lines commenced even before Dalhousie penned his Minutes. Dalhousie’s work therefore represents a synthesis of ideas drawn from his collaboration with many others. Even various groups in Indian society had some small influence on this future railway system.

Finally, how far the general plan of the trunk lines of India found in Dalhousie’s Minutes was redrawn in detail as pioneering engineers adapted this to the huge demands that the terrain and climate of the subcontinent placed upon them, is examined.

About the Speaker

Di Drummond is best known for her book Crewe: Railway Town, Company and People, published by Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1995, and for her contribution to The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880-1980: An Introductory History, Eric Ives, Diane Drummond and Leonard Schwarz, The University of Birmingham Press, 2000.

Di researched, gave international conference papers, and published, on railways of the British Empire while she was Senior Lecturer, then Reader, at the Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies, Leeds Trinity University between 1995 and 2017.