EARLY   LOCOMOTIVE   MANUFACTURING ENDEAVOURS  IN  INDIA

In 1921, The Peninsular Locomotive Company was incorporated and they erected their factory near Tatanagar. Due to internal difficulties and insufficient encouragement from the Government, the company dissolved in 1924 without having produced any locomotive. The factory was revived by the Defence Department during World War II and in 1945 it was given to Tata Sons’ Limited to build locomotives and was renamed as Tata Engineering and Locomotives Company ( TELCO ).The company still exists and is engaged mainly in producing Diesel Engines and bulk carrier vehicles of road traffic.

  The issue of setting up the locomotive building unit continued to be under active consideration of the Central legislature and as a result of agitation of Indian leaders the Government in the late 30s appointed a committee consisting of Mr. Humphreys, Sr. Mechanical Engineer  Bengal-Nagpur Railways and Mr. Srinivasan, a Sr. Accounts Officer to investigate the possibility of establishing a locomotive manufacturing units and to consider its economic viability. Subsequently they recommended Chandmari a place near Kanchrapara in Bengal as a possible site and planning work was taken up. This also could not be adopted on account of the War and after the War, the project could not mature due to proposed partition, which inevitably necessitated change of site.

  Soon after the war, a scheme was followed  up and the manufacture of locomotives in repair workshops was not considered feasible. The result was  Chittaranjan.

EARLY RAILWAY WORKSHOPS IN INDIA

Railway workshops and sheds in India represent the biggest industrial enterprise in the world. When the railways were first started in India, it was felt that only minor repairs would be possible in India and all spare parts including nuts and bolts would have to be imported from England.

In 1894 a small Loco workshop was started in Byculla by Great Indian Peninsula Railway.

On EIR a bigger form of enterprise was seen. It was probably under compulsion that their first Loco was misdirected to Australia and the ship carrying the first set of carriages had met with a wreck, it was felt necessary to build coaches in India. The first Locomotive and Carriage workshop  was set up in Howrah. which was soon discovered to inadequate both in terms of space and facilities and hence the much larger and more versatile Loco work shop was constructed at Jamalpur in 1862. The carriage workshop was continued at Howrah for a few years and finally a new workshop was built in Liluah for repair of Carriage and Wagons only.  

Apart from the small loco workshop started at Byculla the Bombay, Baroda & Central India Railway(BBCIR) had set up a workshop at Amroli, near Surat. The workshop was of a wooden structure and has been abandoned long back. We have a description of the workshop having simple machines like lathes, boring, slotting and shaping, hydraulic press, hoists and a few track laying equipments. All these machines were prime-moved by Steam ! Line shaft with belts were used for driving.

Slowly a large number of workshops grew all over the country. To name a few important are Parel, Matunga, Dohad Ajmere in West;  Jamalpur, Kharagpur, Lilooah and  Kanchrapara in East ; Perambur, Golden Rock in South; Charbagh, Gorakhpur in North and Hubli in Central India. 
 

Eastern Railway has three Workshops for maintenance of its assets, each dealing with different type of stock. Click on the links to see the pages below.

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