Ajodhya (Ayodhya): The first railway lines part 1

The year was 1868. The Oudh & Rohilkand Railway (O&RR) company had built only one railway line by then. The section was between Lucknow and the left bank of the Ganges ( Ganga) at Kanpur.

There were plans to extend the network all over United Provinces ( as Uttar Pradesh was known then). The construction of these lines were done to connect several towns such as Lucknow, Cawnpore (Kanpur), etc., with Delhi, Calcutta, (Kolkata), and the North West Frontier ( now in Pakistan).

Prominent lines built included the following: Benares ( Varanasi) – Lucknow loop, Allahabad ( now Prayagraj)- Fyzabad ( later Faizabad now known as Ayodhya Cantt) branch line and the Moghalsarai-Lucknow-Saharanpur main line ( Mughalsarai is now named Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Jn. or DDU).

After the 38.24 miles long Akbarpur-Fyzabad  section of the Benares-Lucknow loop was opened for traffic on June 10,1873, Ajodhya (as Ayodhya was then called) came into India’s railway map.

The progress of construction of the Benares Lucknow loop is shown in the table below:

Major bridges on the line included two on the river Gomti. The first one was just after Lucknow on the Lucknow -Barabanki section and the second was between Zafarabad and Jaunpur on the Benares-Shahganj section.

O&RR started line construction from the Lucknow end first connecting the Lucknow Block Hut-Barabanki section  and then the Fyzabad- Barabanki section in 1872. The line was finally completed up to Benares Cantt with on May 1,1874 .

Dufferin Bridge

The biggest boost to this line came on October 1,1887 when the Dufferin Bridge over the Ganga at Varanasi was constructed.  This was the lone major bridge on the Moghalsarai – Lucknow -Saharanpur main line via the Rae Bareli line. Trains towards Ajodhya took this line until Benares before joining the Benares-Lucknow loop.

With this the O&RR line connected the East Indian Railway ( EIR) main line at Moghalserai (now called DDU). This enabled O&RR’s connection to Calcutta, Delhi and Patna via the EIR.

The Dufferin bridge was a part of the Moghalserai- Lucknow – Saharanpur main line via Benares, Partabgarh ( now Pratapgarh), Raebareli, Lucknow, Bareilly and Moradabad. Prior to construction of this bridge passengers alighted on the right bank of the Ganga crossed the river by a ferry before taking another train towards Benares.

The bridge was renamed as Malviya bridge after it was re-girdered to accommodate the second line and opened as a double line bridge on December 5,1947. The following are the line opening dates of the Moghalsarai- Lucknow main line:-

The British Government acquired the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway Company effective January 1, 1889. Thirty-six years later, on July 1,1925, this company was merged with the East Indian Railway Company.

Neglect of the Benares-Lucknow loop

 For decades post independence, this line between Benares-Lucknow via Ayodhya was neglected. It remained a single line diesel section with semaphore signalling till the year 2000.

The line was fully electrified recently prior to the introduction of Vande Bharat express between Gorakhpur and Lucknow. Doubling works between Barabanki – Zafarabad are being done on a war footing with several patches in the section already doubled.

Very soon the line is likely to be fully doubled and electrified.

End of Part 1