Life at a wayside Railway station

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.