Patiala State Monorail Trainways - History of PSMT

History of PSMT

Whether it was the time or the place I do not know, but perhaps the two together conspired to bury this unique little line in the dust of time. I have found little more than brief published mentions of it and some of those were obviously mistaken conjecture. It was so different from other railways and indeed from other monorails that it was probably easier to dismiss it than to understand it. And yet, from what I can learn of it, it was effective, efficient, and exactly what the situation called for.

Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh of Patiala got this unique railway system constructed to facilitate movement of people and goods in his state. The chief engineer of this project was Colonel C. W. Bowles. Colonel Bowles has earlier successfully used monorail based on Ewing System (designed by William Thorold) during his stint as engineer during laying of tracks for Bengal Nagpur Railway for transportation of construction materials. Maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh made him chief Engineer for the PSMT project. One of the objects of PSMT was to make use of the 560 mules being maintained by Patiala State. Apart from mules, bullocks were also used to haul the monorail before introduction of steam engine on route of PSMT.

The only published information about PSMT was in a 1908 edition of Imperial Gazetteer of India in which there was a brief mention. The gazetteer simply stated that "a mono-rail tramway, opened in February, 1907, connects Basi with the railway at Sirhind". An ordnance map of 1913 also shows a tramway running along west side of road, but does not mention the PSMT by name. Apart from the above, PSMT has not been mentioned in any official documents of that period in India.