Bengal Assam Railway

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Assam Bengal Railway was conceived in the late eighties of the nineteenth century, when railways had come to expand in different parts of the subcontinent, with the objective of developing communication system of the eastern region of British India. In the eastern region, which particularly meant Assam and Eastern Bengal, the only important railway system was the Eastern Bengal Railway run by the East Indian Railway company. Eastern Bengal ran a track from Kolkata to Kushtia near the confluence of the river Gorai River with the Ganges River.^[1]^[2]^[3]

In 1870, an extension was made up to Goalanda at the confluence of the Brahmaputra River and the Ganges. It was not before 1902 that this line was further extended up to Dhubri in Assam. The line to Goalanda was expected to absorb the traffic passing along the Ganges between Kolkata and the northwest and along the Brahmaputra between Kolkata and the northeast.^[1] The section started functioning from 1904. The line was then extended to the tea growing areas of Upper Assam and to the jute growing areas of Mymensingh and Dhaka via Bhairab Bazar. The railway was also extended to Chandpur to move Kolkata-bound traffic to Eastern Bengal Railway. By the time the Assam Bengal Railway started functioning throughout its length in 1904, the export of tea and jute through the Chittagong port had sharply increased. The total value of the trade of the port was Rs 39.23 million in 1904 and it rose to Rs 183.25 million in 1928. ^[1]

The Assam Bengal Railway was amalgamated with the Eastern Bengal Railway in 1942 when the line was renamed the Bengal and Assam Railway.^[1]^[4] At time of the partition of India in 1947, Bengal-Assam Railway was split up and the portion of the system, about 2,603.92 km long which fell within the boundary of erstwhile East Pakistan was named as Eastern Bengal Railway, the control remaining with the central Government of Pakistan Later with the effect from 1st February 1961, Eastern Bengal Railway was renamed as Pakistan Railway.^[4]