‘Friendly line’ lost to gauge conversion
Fuzz Jordan looks at the second of two narrow gauge lines that served Katwa.
Burdwan (now known as Barddhaman) sits 95km northwest of Calcutta (now Kolkata) on the trans-India main line from Calcutta to Delhi. It has a large broad-gauge locomotive shed, which was once home to the last of the British Pacifics to run on the subcontinent. From here, a 2ft 6in gauge line set off to the north to Katwa, where it met another broad-gauge line from Calcutta.
As with the line from Katwa to Ahmadpur described in NGW157, McLeod & Company was the builder and ran it from the date it opened (1st December 1915) right up until 1966. It was a very busy line, supporting a service of seven trains a day – the first departure was at 02.40! It started at Burdwan, where the narrow-gauge terminus was hidden away on the north-eastern side of the main station, with very little in the way of facilities. The line left the station facing north-west before veering to the north for its journey north to Katwa.
The route passed a mixture of small stations and even smaller halts, very often just somewhere to stop adjacent to a level crossing, with no platform or buildings.
Busy route
At 53 kilometres long and with the intensive service, up and down trains were scheduled to cross at the village of Balgona, about halfway between the termini, so if the down train was delayed, so was the up! At Katwa the narrow-gauge was treated as the equal of the broad-gauge, and transferring between the two was almost crossplatform.
The motive power used was identical with the Katwa to Ahmadpur line, the steam fleet covered in last month’s feature. However, from the late 1990s, diesels
took over with conventional locohauled trains utilising ZDM5 diesel locomotives complementing EZZS or ZRD railbuses with trailers.
The ZDM5s are a B-B diesel hydraulic built by Indian Railways at Chittaranjan from 1989. They are rated at 450 horsepower and useful for reasonably long trains on level routes. One peculiarity was that the throttle control came in the form of something akin to a ship’s wheel!
The first railbuses were class EZZS with remarkably short windows, later supplemented in the late 1990s by the ZRD class. They provided an interesting alternative to the conventional diesels.
Gauge conversion took place in two tranches. The narrow gauge line from Burdwan to Balgona closed on 15th April 2010, and re-opened as electrified broad gauge in 2014, with narrow gauge still operating onwards from Balgona on to Katwa.
With the broad-gauge now occupying Balgona station proper, a temporary run-round loop was laid in the foot of the embankment just to the north with an earth platform! Of course, the remaining narrow gauge soon disappeared, and was replaced by electrified broad gauge on 12th January 2018.