History
From 1878, the railway route from Kolkata, then called Calcutta, to Siliguri was in two laps through the eastern part of Bengal. The first lap was a 185 km journey along the Eastern Bengal State Railway from Calcutta Station (later renamed Sealdah) to Damookdeah Ghat on the southern bank of the Padma River, then across the river in a ferry and the second lap of the journey. A 336 km metre gauge line of the North Bengal Railway linked Saraghat on the northern bank of the Padma to Siliguri.
The 1.8 km long Hardinge Bridge across the Padma came up in 1912. Presently, it is between the Paksey and Bheramara stations on the broad gauge line between Khulna and Parbatipur in Bangladesh. In 1926 the metre-gauge section north of the bridge was converted to broad gauge, and so the entire Calcutta - Siliguri route became broad-gauge.
In the pre-independence days, two legendary mail trains used the Sealdah-Parbatipur line. The Darjeeling Mail linked Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, and Siliguri. The Assam Mail originally ran from Santahar to Guwahati.
Read more about this topic: East Bengal Mail
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