page_title: George Turnbull (civil engineer)
section_title: East Indian Railway
hierarchical_section_title: George Turnbull (civil engineer) / East Indian Railway
caption_attribution_description: English: Scan by contributor of 1900-era atlas page with railway route superimposed by contributor.Duncanogi (talk) 21:40, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
context_page_description: George Turnbull was a British engineer responsible from 1851 to 1863 for construction of the first railway line from Calcutta to Benares, some 965 km – later extended to Delhi. Turnbull was acclaimed by the Indian government as the "first railway engineer of India".
context_section_description: In 1850 he was appointed Chief Engineer of the East Indian Railway building 1851–1862 the first railway 541 miles from Calcutta to Benares (on the route to Delhi), 601 miles including branches. He designed Calcutta's terminus at Howrah which now has 23 platforms and the highest train-handling capacity of any station in India. The monsoon-ravaged Ganges tributaries such as the wide Sone River were particularly challenging to bridge: a major constraint for Turnbull was the lack of both quality clay and brick-building skills resulting in the change to importing much ironwork from England for the many bridges and other structures (all rails were imported from England as no Indian steel works existed). Another constraint was the difficulty of moving enormous volumes of materials from Calcutta up the Ganges on its primitive "country boats", particularly during the period of the Indian Mutiny when many boats were sunk and materials stolen. Cholera killed thousands.
caption: East Indian Railway built by George Turnbull
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