who took the initiative to plan the first underground railway in kolkata
Kolkata Metro The then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, first conceived the idea of building an Underground Railway for Kolkata in early 1950s. A survey was done by a team of French experts, but nothing concrete came of this. Efforts to solve the problem by augmenting the existing fleet of public transport vehicles hardly helped, since roads accounted for only 4.2% of the surface area in Kolkata, compared with 25% in Delhi and even 30% in other cities. With the goal of finding alternative solutions to alleviate the suffering of commuters, the Metropolitan Transport Project (Railways) (MTP) was set up in 1969.[5] The MTP (Rlys), with help of Soviet specialists (Lenmetroproekt) and East German engineers, prepared a master plan to provide five rapid-transit (metro) lines for the city of Kolkata, totalling a route length of 97.5Â km in 1971.[6] However, only three were selected for construction. These were:
History of rail transport in India The country's first passenger train, which ran between Bombay's Bori Bunder station and Thane on 16 April 1853, was dedicated by Lord Dalhousie. The 14-carriage train was hauled by three steam locomotives: the Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan. Travelling 34 kilometres (21 mi), the train carried 400 people. The passenger line was built and operated by the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR).[2][3] It was built in 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) broad gauge, which became the country's standard for railways.