A small vittakorai thottakorai from my school days' Timetable grazing days. I have always been fascinated by the series of stations with the prefix 'New' coming up on the NFR line before Rangiya Jn. I used to think why a special treatment to those places alone?!
This got rekindled after a post in IRFCA forum. Now presenting you a sequence of posts (photos with commentary) with some information on the West Assam/ North Bengal portion of NFR.
Please zoom in as much as you can and see the photo.
Yellow line is Bangladesh border (down of line is Bangladesh). Green line is MG (now BG), lines just next to Bangladesh border are abandoned. Red line is direct BG.
Look at how beautiful the Himalayas are at the top (North). A river coming out of each of its valleys and ultimately joining into Brahmaputra. To our bottom left corner is Katihar Junction. The gateway for people coming from North and West. Trains from Katihar ran straight (pre 1947) after Barsoi Jn ( marked BOE), into Parbatipur in Bangladesh, marked as P. They had a reversal there and proceeded North to Siliguri. Trains from Kolkata used to enter Bangladesh far down South itself and entered Parbatipur from point marked as 2
These are trains meant for Siliguri (and pax to Darjeeling). Trains carrying passengers to Guwahati took a right turn after reversal at Parbatipur, proceeded East and entered through the point marked as 3. They went via Mal Jn. Post independence, the railway rights via East Pakistan got severed and we had to invent a new line without touching them. The line North of Barsoi Jn didn't go all the way till SGUJ then.
So, when planning for the new line, they had to make sure that there were odd number of reversals between KIR and GHY so as to match the one reversal we earlier had at Parbatipur. This was required because MG coaches can be coupled in only one direction. There is now a reversal at Barsoi, if trains had to go from KIR to Aluabari Road and then on new alignment till Siliguri. Post Siliguri, the line joined at Mal Jn from West side, requiring another reversal. So two. It was decided to bring in the new line from Aluabari Road to Siliguri from North side so it will make a third reversal there. Instead of handling three reversals, it was then decided to realign the path at both Barsoi and Mal so that only one reversal is there at SGUJ. Remember we are talking only about MG days (marked in Green in the photo)
Now look at Barsoi post realignment. The middle green line was the newly laid MG line to eliminate reversal. Trains coming from KIR and proceeding North need not reverse. This arrangement was retained in BG as well (red line) with a less pronounced curve, to facilitate higher speed and BG standards. While this line was converted to BG, a new line was laid from Aluabari Road to Siliguri bypassing the troublesome areas like Naxalbari. This new line (red colour) can be seen moving SW of the original line in the overall photo shared at first.
We will now move on to Siliguri area. Please zoom in fully to see more info.
The top left green line is the new MG line post 1947 from Aluabari Road to Siliguri. The bottom red line is the new BG alignment from Aluabari Road. MG line reaches Siliguri first while BG line reaches New Jalpaiguri first, then takes a left turn to go to SGUJ. I haven't marked NG line to DJ here. As you can see NJP is far away from the actual Jalpaiguri marked JPG which is on the line from Parbatipur.
The new BG line follows the old MG alignment for a short distance taking right from NJP, till Raninagar Jalpaiguri, marked RQJ. It then branches off via Jalpaiguri Road JOE to go towards GHY. The original MG alignment (now BG) from SGUJ towards Mal Jn can be seen shooting up North from SGUJ in this photo.
This scenic line goes upstream North, crosses two to three dozen rivers and goes inside deep forests as seen in the first/ overall photo shared earlier. The new BG alignment in red moves much downstream and eliminates the need for two to three dozen bridges. Clearly visible in the overall photo. Please compare section from SGUJ to APDJ via Mal in MG and NJP to APDJ via NCB in BG.
We will now proceed to Mal. The line from West left comes from SGUJ and entered Mal Jn (now named Mal Bazar MLBZ).
The line from Bangladesh comes from South down and enters MLBZ. The line to GHY takes a sharp right top turn out of MLBZ and proceeds to our Right East side. We can clearly observe the circular loop that was constructed to avoid reversal for trains coming from SGUJ and proceeding to GHY. New Mal Jn was constructed in BG and you can see there is now a bypass (red) directly to NMZ bypassing Mal Bazar and avoiding the loop altogether.
We will now move on to Alipur Duar area. If you observe the overall picture shared first, you can see that there is a line coming from Bangladesh (South side) via Cooch Behar to Alipur Duar. This is pre 1947 MG line. The line coming from Mal enters Alipur Duar from North side (green line) in this picture. It proceeds straight to Bangladesh, crossing three stations in this town. Alipur Duar Junction, from where the line to GHY takes a sharp left turn, Alipur Duar Court and finally Alipur Duar station. This was MG, now BG.
Remember the new BG alignment from NJP? It enters APD town from the South side (comes via Cooch Behar, we will see it in detail in the next photo). The alignment in red runs almost parallel to the original MG line from Bangladesh, has a separate station New Alipur Duar (strangely station code NOQ), takes a right turn and joins the original MG alignment towards GHY, proceeding via Samuktala Road SMTA (right side in this photo)
As mentioned above, we will now take a look at Cooch Behar area. Pretty busy, isn't it?
As mentioned earlier, the MG line from Bangladesh comes from South bottom side of this photo, has Cooch Behar station COB and proceeds straight north to Alipur Duar (via Baneswar). The new BG line from NJP comes from top left, has New Cooch Behar station, turns left and goes parallel to MG line, via New Baneswar, to New Alipur Duar.
The new BG line from New Cooch Behar that goes to our bottom right goes to Golakpur Junction. This was needed as that line was cut off from NJP side due to a portion of the old MG line being transferred to Bangladesh. You can see this in the overall photo shared first, as a point where Bangladesh border swallows a portion of an MG line. The straight line alignment from Alipur Duar to Cooch Behar was changed to a sharp curve to allow trains from Alipur Duar to enter New Cooch Behar first and then take a right turn to proceed towards Cooch Behar. To that extent, the small portion of the MG alignment that bypasses NCB is since abandoned.
And finally, we take a look at Guwahati area.
The MG line coming from (SGUJ/APDJ) North in this photo as a Green line, stopped just short of Brahmaputra river bank at Amingaon. The station on the other (South) bank was Pandu. There were no through services and all passengers have to avail steamer service between Amingaon and Pandu. Upon opening of the Saraighat bridge, Amingaon and Pandu were abandoned. Agthori and Kamakhya were constructed as replacement stations in the new alignment.
The line from bottom left coming to KYQ is the new BG line from Bongaigaon, crossing Brahmaputra at Jogikhopa. This can be seen in the overall photo. Since the new BG line branched out before Bongaigaon station BNGN, a new station was built prior to the take off point and named as New Bongaigaon NBQ.
So, this explains the difference between the Olds and News in West Assam 😃
Please go through when you get time and let me know if you have questions!
- Thank you. Ara.
