My friend BL Gupta has recently written about the
ground level tough duties which railway employees have to perform for Indian
railways. Being the son of a Station Master, I am aware of many of such
difficult situations. I am adding a few experiences from my forthcoming book
(An English translation of earlier written Hindi book “Ik Tha ...bachpan”.)
(At Kanpur) Father’s duty places were on the east,
central and west cabins in Juhi Yard on weekly basis. All these cabins were
about 3 kms away from our house. Duties being on shift basis, many a times he
had to go there during night hours too. There was no road or footpath. He had
to cross over several railway tracks while travelling this distance, and as
such it was a source of constant worry.
(At Samhon, Dist. Etawah)- It was a station with
mere two railway lines. At both ends of the station, around 500 meters away on
either side, Samhon East and Samhon West signal-cabins and 6 or 7 residential
quarters for station employees were there. For all the water requirements there
was a well near the station. Beyond these, there was nothing. The height of
railway platform was matching with that of railway lines, on which red clay
soil was spread and compressed.
This section of East Indian Railway was a
single-lined one, meaning thereby that the same track was used for trains
moving in both the directions. On all such stations, a loop line is provided,
which runs parallel to the main line at the station and then is joined with it
after a distance at ends. As such, at all these small “road side” stations
there are at least two tracks. In case of a crossing with the trains coming
from the opposite direction or to provide way to a fast moving express train by
a passenger or goods train, the slow
moving train is halted on the loop line and the other one is allowed to move
past on the main line. Samhon was station falling in this category. Electricity
was available those days at big (junction) stations. Most of the smaller and
medium grade stations were using kerosene based lamps for lighting 6 or 7
signals, station office and the two cabin points. Railway employees living in
quarters were also dependent on lanterns or lamps.
I remember some times when a lamp used for lighting a signal used to get extinguished due to a storm or high speed wind. In such emergent situation the
station staff deployed on the duty had to run and
light it again, otherwise the trains would come to a halt due to non
availability of signals.
Due to dense atmospheric fog engulfing the night
sometimes during extreme winters, it became impossible for engine drivers to
spot the signals. To overcome this situation, each station was provided with a
special type of sound producing device. Miniaturised circular boxes of diameter
slightly less than the width of the rail section and filled with a soft
chemical were used for this purpose. These fog-signals were used strapping them
to the railway line. As the front wheel of the engine passed over these
devices, these were to explode producing a high decibel sound. Engine drivers
had to gather the exact instructions from these sound signals. A standard
signal code was available to the railway for this purpose.