The first Indian Rail Company

The bill to incorporate India’s first railway company, the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company [G.I.P.R] (later it was rechristened as Peninsula), came up before the British Parliament twice. First in March 1847 and later in 1849.

 

In March 1847, the East Indian Company, which then ruled India, opposed the bill on certain clauses forcing it to be withdrawn. Matters dragged on till 1849 when Lord Dalhousie, who had experience in railway matters in England, took over as the Governor-General of India. On August 1, 1849, the Act to incorporate the Great Indian Peninsula Railway came into being.

The original contract made on August 17, 1849, between the East India Company and the Great Indian Peninsula Railway stated that the capital of the GIP Company shall be 5 lakh pounds, but can be subsequently increased to one million pounds in case the railway line has to be extended beyond Callian (Kalyan) and across the Thull and Bhor Ghats. The railway line has been referred to as an “Experimental line of Railway” throughout the contract.