Indian Steam Railway Society

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Madras and Southern Maratta Railway (MSMR) 2-4-0 built by
Sharp Stewart of Manchester in 1862. Photo was taken in 1864

(Photo contributed by Ian Campbell, who's wife's great grandfather,
Henry Stephenson worked as a locomotive engineer on the MSMR)
Altogether nearly 24,000 steam locomotives have been put into service in the Indian sub-continent, starting in December 1851 with a small contractor's engine named 'Thomason' at an aqueduct site ninetly miles (150 km) north-east of Delhi. For many years the bulk of these engines came from the United Kingdom and when, towards the end of the nineteenth century, some orders were placed in Germany and the United States because British builders had full order books, there were angry questions asked in Parliament.

One outcome of this was the introduction, from 1903 onwards, of a series of 'standard' designs sponsored by the British Engineering Standards Association (BESA) which, it was hoped, would simplify future ordering and facilitate transfers from one railway to another. However some latitude was allowed to individual railways, due regard being paid to established practices and local requirements, so that in fact there were many detail variations, particularly on company-owned lines, and these differences multiplied with the introduction of superheating. The railways worked by the State tended to follow the standards more rigidly and even used a common letter classification system for the broad (5 ft. 6 in.) gauge designs.

After the 1914-18 war, traffic was expected to increase rapidly and at the same time the railways had to make use of coal of inferior quality, requiring larger fireboxes than had been customary up to that time. Hence a new series of Indian Railway Standard (IRS) designs were evolved covering not only the broad and metre gauges but, in dude course, the 2 ft. 6 in. lines as well. This time a uniform classification was used for all railways and deviations from the norm were strictly discouraged. Unfortunately the broad gauge Pacific passenger engines proved to be unstable at high speed, being unduly susceptible to track irregularities; various modifications were made and they put in a lot of useful work but never fulfilled original expectations. These criticisms did not, however, apply to the metre gauge Pacifics, and the various 2-8-2 freight locomotives, which did not operate at high speeds.

During the 1939-45 war large numbers of American and Canadian locomotives were brought in to cope with the greatly increased traffic and traditional British practices gave way to bar frames and other transatlantic features. Some of these were incorporated in the new post-war designs introduced from 1947 onwards; by then India had achieved Independence and was taking steps to establish her own locomotive building factory at Chittaranjan in West Bengal, between Asansol and Madhupur. Altogether 2351 steam locomotives were turned out there during 1950-72; in addition, the Tata Engineering & Locomotive Company (Telco) built 1155 metre gauge engines at Jamshedpur in Bihar, near Tatanagar Junction on the main line running west from Kharagpur.

The above extract was taken from Steam in India by Hugh Hughes; Published by D.BRADFORD BARTON LTD