INDIAN FRONTIER RAILWAYS
On the north-west frontier of India the plains of the Punjab are separated from the great central valley of Afghanistan, from the deserts of Baluchistan, and from the Russian Empire on the north thereof, by ranges of mountains, otherwise "a gridiron of stupendous ridges and furrows," intersected by passes which have always been regarded as the most vulnerable points of the Indian Empire. Through these passes from the earliest days of recorded history there has come a long succession of invasions instigated by that incalculable wealth of India which may well have inspired the envy of dwellers in less favoured lands.[83]
These considerations would alone suffice to establish the need for an effective control of the more important of the said passes by the Power which exercises supremacy in India; but the obligation thus devolving upon the British people as the present holders of that supremacy has been increased in recent times by two further factors—(1) troubles with frontier tribes; and (2) the development of that Central Asian Question which, though now no longer acute, was, not so many years ago, a source of great anxiety in England and India. Frontier troubles gave rise to a number of expeditions to Afghanistan from time to time, while the gravity of the general situation was increased by the once steady advance of Russia towards India—whether for the purposes of actual conquest thereof or, alternatively, for the attainment of the aim cherished by Russia during three centuries for an outlet to a southern sea, such outlet being sought via the Persian Gulf on her disappointment in regard to the Dardanelles; though British interests were concerned in either case.
This combination of circumstances, with the possibility, at one time, that Afghanistan might become the theatre of war in a conflict between two great European Powers, invested with special interest and importance the provision on the north-west frontier of India of railway lines which, whether constructed to the more important passes or going actually through them, would form a ready means of concentrating Anglo-Indian troops at such places on the frontier, or beyond, as occasion might require.
From this point of view the Bolan and Khyber passes—the former leading to Quetta and Kandahar and the latter to Kabul—have more especially had importance attached to them as "the two gates of India."
Proposals for constructing railways through them were advanced as early as 1857, when Mr. (afterwards Sir) W. P. Andrew, chairman of the Sind, Punjab and Delhi Railway, acted as spokesman of a deputation which waited on Lord Palmerston in order to urge the construction of (1) a railway down the valley of the Euphrates, improving our communications with India by connecting the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; and (2) railways through the Bolan and Khyber passes, not only, as he urged, facilitating the movement of troops to the frontier, but offering alternative routes by means of which the flank or the rear of an enemy operating beyond or between the limits of the two lines might be threatened. Mr. Andrew followed up with great earnestness and perseverance for many years his advocacy of these views, publishing a succession of books and pamphlets, and writing many letters to the Press on the subject.
Such advocacy had, however, no practical issue, and, though the arguments originally advanced in favour of the Euphrates railway lost most of their force on the opening of the Suez Canal, the consequences of the neglect to provide better means of communication with the north-west frontier were well manifested in the troubles of 1878-79-80.
The refusal of the Ameer of Afghanistan—who had already accorded an ostentatious welcome to a Russian Embassy at Kabul—to receive a British mission led, in 1878, to an order being given for the advance of three columns of British forces upon Afghan territory, the routes selected for this purpose being (1) the Khyber Pass, (2) the Kuram Pass, and (3) the Bolan Pass. At this time, however, the system of frontier railways which had been advocated so long scarcely existed except on paper. The nearest point of railway communication with Afghanistan was then at Sukkur, on the Indus. An extension across the Sind desert to the entrance to the Bolan Pass had been surveyed, and a very short section had been laid; but in their advance on Kandahar Sir Donald Stewart and his force had to march all the way from the Indus, experiencing great trials in crossing the intervening desert, where many of the men lost their lives. The work of constructing this desert railway—which presented no engineering difficulty—was now taken actively in hand, and the line was available for the troops on their return.
Success attended the expedition of 1878 so far as it led to the flight of Shere Ali, the occupation of Kandahar by Sir Donald Stewart, the control by the British of the three main highways between India and Afghanistan, and the signing of the treaty of Gandamak; but the murder of Sir Louis Cavagnari and his staff at Kabul, in September, 1879, rendered necessary the sending of a further expedition, General Sir Frederick (afterwards Lord) Roberts being directed to proceed with a British force by the Kuram route to Kabul.
Thereupon the whole question of transport facilities was revived afresh, and, although the expedition itself was a conspicuous success, delays and commissariat difficulties arose which might have been avoided had better railway facilities been available.[84] The terminus, at that time, of the Punjab State Railway was at Jhelum, seventy miles from Rawal Pindi, 180 from Peshawar, and 260 from Thal, the frontier post of the Kuram pass; and in spite of the vigorous efforts made, between 1878 and 1880, to extend the line, Jhelum remained the actual railway base throughout, no material assistance being gained from the twenty miles of extension which, owing to the great engineering difficulties presented by innumerable ravines, could alone be carried out during that period. Commenting on the "painfully slow" progress being made by the Khyber column, The Times of October 13, 1879, remarked:—
It is now upwards of a quarter of a century since the chairman of the Sind railway commenced to broach the idea of connecting the Khyber and Bolan passes with the railway system of India. For more than a quarter of a century he has unsparingly advocated these views.... Had the views so persistently advocated by Mr. Andrew, and so repeatedly brought forward by us, been adopted at the commencement of the struggle last October, as we then ventured to insist upon, vast sums would have been spared in the hire of transport, and we should have been spared the ignominy of feeling that a British army, nominally on active service, has occupied five weeks in covering less than seventy miles.
Rawal Pindi—one of the most important strategical points in India—was not reached by the railway until October, 1880, by which time the Afghan War of 1878-80 had been brought to a close; and the further extension of the Indian railway system to Peshawar,—another position of the utmost strategic importance, situate ten miles from the entrance to the Khyber Pass, and 190 from Kabul—was effected by May, 1883.
From a military point of view, however, still greater importance was attached, at that time, to the securing of rail communication through the Bolan Pass to Quetta and Pishin in the direction of Kandahar, this being the route by which, it was thought, the Russians would be certain to attempt their invasion of India,—if they should undertake one at all.
Surveys for an extension of the Sukkur-Sibi desert line to Pishin were made whilst that line was under construction, and early in 1880 the Government gave directions that the extension was to be proceeded with; though they decided that the route to be taken from Sibi should be through the Hurnai Pass in preference to the Bolan route, the former being regarded as preferable for the broad-gauge line (5 ft. 6 in.) with which the "Kandahar State Railway," as it was to be called, would be provided.
Arrangements were at once made for collecting the necessary materials and for carrying through the work with the least possible delay; but further progress was checked, in July, 1880, by the disaster at Maiwand. In the following October the Gladstone Government, who had succeeded the Beaconsfield Administration and had, apparently, resolved upon a complete reversal of the Indian policy of their predecessors, followed up an earlier announcement of their intention to withdraw from Kandahar by giving orders for the cessation of the work on the Sind-Pishin railway. Maiwand having been avenged, and some refractory tribes subdued, Afghanistan was completely evacuated by the British at the end of April, 1881, and the construction of frontier railways in India was dropped, for the time being.
In the middle of 1883 came a reconsideration of the position. Russia was then showing increased activity in the direction of Merv, and the British Government concluded, apparently, that they had been too hasty in ordering the abandonment of the Kandahar State Railway scheme nearly three years before. So they gave orders that the work should be resumed; though, in order to render this volte face on their part less conspicuous, they directed that the undertaking should now be known only as the "Hurnai Road Improvement Scheme"; that it should be proceeded with quietly, in order that it might not attract too much attention, and that the suggestion of a "road improvement scheme," instead of a railway, should be kept up by the engineers not being allowed to have even a temporary line of rails for conveying stores, materials for bridges, etc., from the base to the passes. This last-mentioned stipulation meant that the stores and materials had to be either transported on the backs of camels or dragged on wheels up stream; and it was estimated that, in addition to the great loss of time, a sum of not less than £1,000,000 was wasted in this way before the order prohibiting the use of temporary rails was rescinded.
A start was made with the work in October, 1883, and the fact that the Russians were then actually approaching Merv, and that a sudden advance by them in force was regarded as probable, led to the laying of great emphasis on the need for construction being pushed on with the utmost vigour. When, in February, 1884, the Russians did occupy Merv, the pressure brought to bear on the Engineer-in-chief became still more acute. Then, in May, the British Government formally announced that, owing to the encroachments of Russia, the line would be built. The fiction of a "Hurnai Road Improvement Scheme" was now abandoned. Henceforth the line under construction was to be known as "The Sind-Pishin State Railway."
From the very outset, however, the difficulties which crowded upon Colonel (afterwards Sir James) Browne, R.E., an officer well experienced in railway and engineering work who was entrusted with the carrying out of the scheme, were unfavourable to the prospects of speed in construction. The surveys which had already been made were found not only worthless but misleading. The first members of his staff were unacquainted with railway work and had to be succeeded by men brought from England. The plant and materials previously collected, but disposed of at scrap-iron prices when the line was abandoned in 1880, had now to be replaced at an almost fabulous cost, owing to the urgency of the need for them.
All these were, nevertheless, minor troubles as compared with the physical conditions to be overcome.
Starting from an elevation, at Sibi, of 300 ft., the line was to rise 6,200 ft. in the 120 miles between Sibi and the summit level at Kach.
Then, for the greater part of the 224 miles to which the line was to extend, the country was a wilderness of rocks and stones—a land of barrenness and desolation, where there was no timber, no fuel, scarcely a blade of grass, and, in places, for stretches of several miles, no water. It was a land, too, almost devoid of inhabitants, while those who did dwell there were described as "a savage and blood-thirsty race of robbers," continually engaged in plunder and inter-tribal warfare, and not growing sufficient food even for their own consumption. Almost everything that was wanted—including supplies for from 15,000 to 30,000 workers and materials for the line—had to be imported from a distance.
Still less inviting was this inhospitable region by reason of its range of climatic conditions. The lowlands have the reputation of being one of the hottest corners of the earth's surface. A temperature of 124 deg. Fahr. has been registered in the Nari valley. The highlands, in turn, offer the alternative of Arctic cold, the temperature there falling in winter to 18 deg. below zero. Between the lowlands and the highlands there is a temperate zone; but here the constant pestilence was dreaded no less than the extremes of heat and cold elsewhere.
As the result of these conditions, the work of construction could be carried on in certain districts for part of the year only, and the workers had to be transferred from one section of the line to another according to the season. Such a movement of front involved the transport of everything,—stores, tools, offices and some thousands of men. "The management of this vast exodus," says Captain Scott-Moncrieff, R.E., in his paper on "The Frontier Railways of India,"[85] "was a work of considerable anxiety and difficulty. A sudden influx of people, such as this, into a desolate and barren land naturally caused a famine. Everything was eaten up, and for some days the question of supplies was the burning question of the hour.... Nine hundred camel loads of food were consumed daily on the works." The customary load for a camel was 400 lbs., but some of the camels carried loads of 800 lbs. up the pass.
The engineering difficulties fell into four principal groups,—(1) the Nari Gorge; (2) the Gundakin Defile; (3) the Chuppur Rift, and (4) the Mud Gorge.[86]
The Nari Gorge, about fourteen miles in length, beginning just beyond Sibi, has been described as "one of the most weird tracks through which a railway has ever been carried. The hills, absolutely bare, rise above the valley for many thousands of feet in fantastic pinnacles and cliffs. It is a scene of the wildest desolation." The Nari river, running through the gorge, is formed by a combination of three streams having but little water on ordinary occasions, but becoming, in time of flood, a raging torrent which fills up the whole gorge for miles, attains a depth of ten feet, and has a velocity of five feet per second. Over this river the railway had to be carried in five different places. Not alone bridges, but heavy embankments, cuttings and tunnels were needed. At one point there was an especially dangerous tunnel in which so many accidents occurred, owing to roof or sides falling in, that at last no workmen would enter it except at a wage five-fold that of the high rate already being paid. The whole work was liable to be stopped for months together, owing to the washing away of half-completed embankments or bridges; though until this portion of the line had been completed no materials could be sent to the sections beyond.
In the Gundakin Defile, eight miles long, two tunnels had to be made through some most treacherous material, and four bridges had to be provided.
The Chuppur Rift is a chasm three miles long in the spurs of a rocky mountain forming an apparently insuperable barrier. In time of floods the river attains a height of from 30 to 40 ft. The running of the railway on a ledge along the side of the mountain being impracticable, owing to the nature of the rock, the engineers cut a line of continuous tunnels partly on one side of the rift and partly on the other, connecting the two series by an iron girder bridge; but, instead of constructing the tunnels in the usual way, from each end—a procedure which would have taken much time—they adopted the expedient of driving openings (adits) into the side of the cliff at various points, and then cutting the tunnel right and left of each of these openings until the various sections met. The only way in which the openings could be made was by lowering men down by ropes several hundred feet from the top of the cliff until they reached the point where the work for an opening was to be started. They then drove crowbars into the perpendicular sides of the cliff in order to gain the necessary support for a platform from which the blasting operations could be carried on. Six of these openings were made on one side of the cliff and six on the other. As a separate gang of men could operate at each it was possible to complete the whole work in the course of a few months. Altogether there is a collective length of 6,400 ft. of tunnels in the rift, in addition to a viaduct 75 ft. high, with seven spans of 40 ft. each, and a bridge having an elevation over the river of 250 ft., and consisting of a central span of 150 ft. and eight spans of 40 ft.
On the summit level, twenty-five miles in length, came the five-mile long Mud Gorge,—a narrow valley, between precipitous mountains, filled with a soil little better than dried mud, and of such a character that several bad slips of road-bed, carrying away the whole of the line, occurred.
One would think that with all these difficulties—physical, climatic and engineering—to face, the constructors of the railway might have been excused any more; but there were others besides.
In August and September, 1884, the troops and native labourers employed on the work on the lower part of the line were visited by an outbreak of fever and scurvy of a virulence almost unprecedented in Indian experience. Large numbers of the men died. In one gang of 200 the average number of deaths was ten a day. Of those who survived the majority were so prostrated as to be scarcely capable of doing anything. Sixty per cent. of the Sappers were in hospital.
Fresh troops, to the extent of three Battalions of Pioneers, were brought on to the work; but they had scarcely arrived before—in November—there was a severe outbreak of cholera. The Afghans thereupon "bolted to a man"; and they were followed by many skilled artisans who had been collected from various parts of India. Additional labour had to be obtained from the Eastern Punjab, but much time was lost.
Whilst the engineers were struggling to overcome these manifold difficulties, the political situation was steadily becoming still more acute. The climax seemed to be reached by the Penj-deh incident of March 30, 1885, when a Russian force under General Komaroff seized this important strategical position, situate near the junction of the Khushk and Murghab rivers. On April 27, 1885, Mr. Gladstone proposed in the House of Commons a vote of £11,000,000 for the purposes of what then seemed to be an inevitable war with Russia. The money was voted the same night.
So the urgency for completing the line which would now, probably, have been available for use had it not been stopped in 1880, was greater than ever. Orders were sent to India that the work must be continued along all parts of the line regardless of seasons. Within a week or two, however, of the war vote at Westminster, cholera broke out afresh among the construction party in India. By the end of May it was spreading among them "like a raging fire"; while to the cholera itself there was added a heat so intense that even the most willing of workers found it almost unendurable.
Under this combination of cholera and excessive heat, work on the lower sections of the line was stopped altogether for a time—Government orders and Russians notwithstanding. All possible measures were taken to mitigate the severity of the epidemic; but the death-rate increased with frightful rapidity. Some of the best workers, European and Asiatic—men who could least be spared, on account of the responsible positions they held—were carried off. During the month of June no fewer than 2,000 died out of 10,000. Of the remainder large numbers sought safety in flight. Many of the minor Government officials, such as telegraph and Post Office clerks, went off in a body.
Whilst sickness and disease had thus been afflicting the camps, fresh troubles had arisen in another direction. Early in 1885 the district was visited by a succession of floods exceeding in severity anything known there for sixty years. In the course of three months the rainfall amounted to 19.27 inches,—a total six times in excess of the average. Several bridges and many miles of temporary roads were washed away; numerous accidents were caused; camping grounds were destroyed; communications were interrupted; food supplies became scarcely obtainable, and great delay resulted in the prosecution of a work for which urgency was being so persistently demanded. The floods did not finally subside until the end of May.
Nature having done so much to impede the progress of the undertaking, it only remained for politicians and officials to do what they could to follow her example.
Mention has already been made of the initial prohibition of temporary lines of rails for the conveyance of stores and materials, and the loss of time and waste of money involved in the use of camels instead; but to this one fact may be added another, namely, that after the Engineer-in-Chief had made his arrangements to obtain sleepers from the juniper forests on the north of the line—this being the only timber available in the whole district—the Government vetoed the arrangement on the ground that it might, possibly, lead to quarrels among the Afghan tribes. The timber had to be procured from India, instead. Hence more delay.
Then the original arrangement with the Engineer-in-Chief, that the work was to be carried out under the Military Department of the Indian Government, and that, in the interests of urgency, he should have a free hand, was changed into one which required that the work should be controlled by a new member of the Public Works Department, who, it is alleged, interfered with many of the working details which should have been left to an Engineer-in-Chief, and, by his "unskilled and unqualified control," caused still further delay, together with much expense and confusion. A good deal of time was lost, for instance, before Col. Browne could get even some indispensable instruments and survey appliances. Especially persistent, also, was Col. Browne's immediate superior in demanding from him "detailed estimates" which, on account of the uncertainties of the engineering work and of the other factors in the situation, it was impossible to prepare whilst the construction of the line was in progress.
Such, however, was the energy which had been shown, in spite of all these difficulties and drawbacks, that the work was completed within the two years and a half fixed by the Engineer-in-Chief at the start as the period in which—"with money freely granted"—it could be done. On March 27, 1887, an engine ran over the line all the way from Sibi to Quetta, and the Hurnai Railway was formally declared open for traffic.
In the meantime the apparent certainty of war with Russia, following, especially, on her seizure of Penj-deh, had led, in April, 1885, to an order being given for the construction of a light railway from Sibi through the Bolan Pass to Quetta, as an alternative, more direct and more quickly constructed route, of which use could be made for a movement of troops to the frontier on the anticipated partial mobilisation of the Indian Army.
The laying of this light railway constituted another notable engineering achievement.
Running through the heart of what has been described as "some of the boldest mountain scenery in India," the Bolan Pass has a length of about sixty miles and a breadth ranging from one mile to a space, in places, of only about twenty yards between the rugged mountain walls which here convert the pass into a mere defile. The pass is, in fact, practically the bed of the Bolan River, and is dry for the greater part of the year, but liable to floods. The temporary narrow-gauge line was to be laid along the river bed without interfering with the military road constructed in 1882-84 as far as Quetta.
For the first forty miles there was a fairly good gradient; but beyond that came a very heavy rise to the top of the pass; and here, at least, anything more than a metre-gauge line would have been impracticable. The possibility of constructing a line of railway through the pass at all had long been the despair of engineers, and this was the reason why the Hurnai route had been decided on in preference to the Bolan for the broad-gauge line to Quetta. Unfortunately, too, the climatic were even greater than the engineering difficulties. The heat in the lower parts of the pass was "beyond all description," and cholera or other diseases carried off thousands of the workers.
With these two lines at their disposal, the Government were, in the spring of 1887, quite prepared for a concentration of British and Indian forces in Afghanistan, had the political condition rendered such a course necessary; but the situation had by then greatly improved, thanks to the negotiations which had been proceeding with Russia for the demarcation of frontiers. In April, 1877, the British and Russian commissioners met at St. Petersburg, and, as the result of still further negotiations, the questions at issue were settled without the appeal to arms which had at one time appeared inevitable.
In 1892 some fifty miles of the Bolan light railway were abandoned in favour of another route which, avoiding the first part of the pass, allowed of a broad-gauge line being laid from Sibi through Quetta to Bostan Junction, where it connects with what is now known as the Hurnai-Pishin Loop. A branch ninety miles in length, from Quetta to Mushki, on the Seistan trade route, was opened in 1905.
To-day the Sind-Pishin railway, with its two sections, via the Bolan and the Hurnai respectively, has its terminus at New Chaman, on the actual frontier of Afghanistan, and within seventy miles of Kandahar. A broad-gauge line throughout, it forms part of the railway system of India, linking up at Ruk junction with the line running thence along the north bank of the Indus to Karachi, and, by means of a bridge across the Indus, with a line on the south of the river which, in one direction provides an alternative route to Karachi, and in the other connects with Calcutta and other leading cities. The Sind-Pishin line affords, in fact, a most valuable means for concentrating on the Afghan frontier, within a short distance of Kandahar, and in the shortest possible time a considerable body of troops collected from all parts of India, together with reinforcements from Europe, landed at Karachi. As a strategical line, therefore, the railway is of exceptional importance to India and to British interests in general; though there can be no suggestion that it would be used otherwise than for purely defensive purposes.
Then, in what, since 1901, has constituted the North-West Frontier Province of India, there has been a considerable extension of frontier railways in recent years,—all serving important strategical purposes. From Peshawar—1,520 miles from Calcutta—there is a broad-gauge extension, twelve miles in length, to Fort Jamrud, at the mouth of the Khyber Pass; from Naushahra, a cantonment twenty-seven miles due east of Peshawar, there is a narrow-gauge line to Dargai, at the foot of the Malakand Pass; while among other lines is one to Thal, a military outpost on the extreme limit of British territory which serves also as a depôt for the trade with Northern Afghanistan passing through the Kurram valley; and one to Banu, a garrison town, seventy-nine miles south of Kohat, built on a site chosen for political reasons by Sir Herbert Edwards in 1848.
A number of other railways on the north-west frontiers of India have been proposed. Whatever may or may not be ultimately done in regard to these further schemes, it is obvious that those already constructed have made an enormous difference in our strategical position in regard to Afghanistan and the lands beyond as compared with the military transport conditions of 1878.