East Central Railway (ECR) organised a photo exhibition at Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir to mark 160 years of Indian Railways and 11 years of ECR. The photo exhibition attracted a huge turnout from all over the country. It was a rare of its kind exhibition with each of the 250 photographs telling a tale of rich tradition of the Indian Railways.
Over 20,000 people visited the exhibition which concluded on Monday. The photographs from the year 1853 to the present day, including ECR’s 11 years of achievement and of important of projects undertaken by the zonal section were displayed.
The photographs displayed that the Indian Railways had enrolled elephants to use them in place of locomotives to push the coach or to take it in the yard for shunting purposes. One of the rare photographs shows the first ever journey of Indian Railways from Bori Bandar in Mumbai to Thane.
Besides, the photographs, depicting the Refugee Special Train of partition era in 1947, drew special attention. And, for the children a Circular Train’s photograph was the centre of attraction.
The other rare photographs which attracted the visitors towards the gallery were — various models of locomotives, coaches of passengers train upto the modern lHB Coaches Patna-Sonepur rail cum road bridge, Harnaut coach maintenance workshop, Chakra wheel factory. A tunnel of the year 1906 of Maharashtra, Saloon of Darbhanga Maharaj, steam engine bearing national anthem and many others.
“We’ve tried out best to hold an enriching photo exhibition of Indian Railways right from the beginning and the responses of the visitors have been more than satisfying. For the first time the visitors of the State and outsiders get an opportunity to know Indian Railways through photographs”, said Chief Public Relation Officer, ECR, Amitabh Prabhakar.
The unusual photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Nizam of Hyderabad, Babu Jagjivan Ram lord linlithgow, Satyajit Ray, Rajiv Gandhi and many others on their journey with train also engrossed visitors to the exhibition till the last day.
“It was a thrilling and educative experience of its own kind. I’d never seen such a photo exhibition of Indian Railways earlier and such exhibitions must be held regularly by the Railways”, said Phankhudi Singh. People from Munger, Jamui, Bhaglapur, Kolkata and even from Kanpur visited the photo exhibition. On last day it was huge rush of the visitors which gives us immense satisfaction, said PRO, U K Jha.