Central Railway Station - 1873

 

Please do not use the pictures without getting my permission, as these photos are copywritten. If you need one please write to me, email address is given below.

If you all think that Central Railway Station was the 1strailway station, then you are wrong. The very 1st railway station was built at Roaypuram, sadly now that station is just used for very few local train stoppages and most of goods train stoppage. Coming back to Central Railway Station, the very same ground where the current building is standing was called “Nari Medu”. 

The word “Medu” in Tamizh means Hillock. When the East India Company decided to move the central railway station from Royapuram to Nari Medu they had a challenge in bringing down the hillock to a flat plain land. So, where the debris would be shifted was their biggest question? In came Stephen Popham [British politician and solicitor] who bought the entire Broadway area which was called Muthialpet. 

Every one made fun of Popham for buying a “big sewage ditch”, Mutialpet was drainage discharge open place from Fort St.George , the sewage was let to be drained on the open grounds of Broadway. Popham smartly made a move, he approached the East India Company asking them to shift or dump the debris at Broadway. Popham had the last laugh, he made “THE BROADWAY” where he allowed all the Europeans to say apart from the Brits [subjective to correction]. The debris which was collected from Nari Medu was deposited in Broadway and hence it is called “Man-adey” later changed to Manadey. You might be all wondering why the East India company had to bring down a hillock – Nari Medu and then construct a railway track, well there was kind of fear among the East India Company as French was bombarding the Fort St.George from the hillock which gave an added advantage for them as well as Hyder Ali and the other, hence hillock became a flat plain. We got to be hugely thankful to Stephen Popham for being a far-sighted person, sadly there is no statue for him rather King George the V who in my opinion has not done any good for the city is still having a statue. 

Madras Central became Chennai Central and then ugly name change happened in 2019 as “Puratchi Thalaivar M.G.Ramachandran Railway Station” to show their pompous of ex-govt, who have not added anything good from 2015-2019 for the city. Another anecdote to the history is that the original building was built by George Harding [which I have shared in the comments column] then later the decorated & most celebrated civil engineer of Madras Robert Chisholm added the clock tower to beautify the structure, what befitting addition it was hats off. Initially it was constructed to accommodate 4 platforms but later due to growing population the number of platforms increased and sadly the Buckingham Canal was made to truncate its course for the construction of platforms from 6-12 and so on, currently it hots 17 platforms.





williamsatish25@gmail.com


Location: Puratchi Thalaivar Dr. M.G. Ramachandran Central Railway Station, Kannappar Thidal, Periyamet, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600003, India

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