Know Your City | Looking back at Bangalore-Chikballapur line, a landmark of railway in Mysore state in early 1900s

Railway expert and former IAS officer T R Raghunandan said the narrow-gauge line used to run until the late 1970s. “These were easier and cheaper to construct and took care of traffic at a time when asphalted roads did not exist. Many of the princely states preferred to have narrow-gauge lines rather than invest in asphalt roads. There was not enough commercial road transport in those days. If you look at the Baroda State Railway and other kingdoms in Saurashtra, there were extensive narrow-gauge lines,” he said. “That was how they served the rural hinterlands. In a sense they were independent countries where local transport was the domain of the Maharajas.”

Nandi Halt and Doddajala, respectively( Express photo by Chetana Hamsagar.)

Raghunandan said the Wadeyars of Mysore also had a connection with the Gaekwads of Baroda. He further noted that the original line, which passed through Nandi via Yelahanka and meandered through Kolar district after passing through Chikballapur, ended in Bangarpet. One or two locomotives that would have run on such lines are on display at the Mysore Railway Museum.

Meanwhile, the restoration of four heritage stations on the route—namely Nandi Halt, Devanahalli, Avatihalli and Doddajala—is underway, with the reconstruction being done by the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) and sponsored by Discovery Village, in collaboration with the South Western Railway.

Chetana Hamsagar, a conservation engineer with INTACH, said, “The Avatihalli station is the only one that has brick and lime in construction. The rest are made of stone and mud/lime mortar… The Avatihalli station may have been reconstructed. They all have sloping roofs with tiles and a double-height central hall, with an externally covered verandah and a small room attached, while the station at Nandi Halt is the largest. At Nandi Halt, the structure to the left of the arch would have been added later to the original.”

Hamsagar noted that additions had been made to the heritage structure but using the same material.

Speaking of some of the challenges involved in restoring old structures such as these, she said, “The main issue is that the wood used in the roof is old teak, which is not compatible with the wood in the market. So to procure aged wood without any water retention in the right length is the main challenge. The original roof tiles were also of different length and width than what is used today. At Nandi, there was no scope to reuse the Mangalore tiles as they had mostly been broken.”

Layers of paint also had to be painstakingly removed from the original stone masonry.

While trains still stop at these stations today, stationmasters are likely to arrive some time before the arrival of the trains to distribute tickets, on account of the relatively low number of passengers.