The India railroad site often has very interesting gems. I found this to be extremely useful. Jack -----Original Message----- From: irfca@yahoogroups.com [mailto:irfca@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of R. Sivaramakrishnan Sent: Monday, January 07, 2008 8:24 AM To: irfca@yahoogroups.com Subject: [IRFCA] Cambridge's Provincial Geographies of India (1913-23) on Internet Archive Just last month Internet Archive has made available online four volumes of the "Provincial Goegraphies of India", edited by T. H. Holland, F.R.S., and published by the Cambridge University Press in 1913-23. What a series! They are not just books on geography but veritable compendia giving information on the history, fauna and flora, the people and their cultures, administration and finances, gazetteer of cities and towns, besides the usual geographic materials like the terrain, its geology, climate, mineral resources, agriculture, etc., profusely illustrated with B&W photographs and bearing useful tables of data. Volume 1, by J. Douie (1916), deals with Panjaub, North-west Frontier Province and Kashmir and includes Delhi (Those days Delhi was considered along with undivided Punjab rather than the United Provinces). Railways are dealt with in pp. 128-131. As the map on p. 129 shows, the network was quite complete even by 1916. http://www.archive. <http://www.archive.org/details/provincialgeogra01holluoft> org/details/provincialgeogra01holluoft I viewed three of the volumes by FLIP BOOK format, but the second volume could be read only through FTP which, for some reason, does not function on my system. Volume 2, by L. S. S. Malley, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Sikkim (1917) http://www.archive. <http://www.archive.org/details/provincialgeogra02holluoft> org/details/provincialgeogra02holluoft Volume 3, E. Thurston, Madras Presidency with Mysore, Coorg and the associated States (1913). The various main and branch lines of M&SM and SIR operating as of 1913 are enumerated (p. 186-188). There are photographs of Nilgiri railway (p. 188) and an upcountry railway station (p. 189), but of great interest are photographs of the Periyar dam during construction (p. 204), Dowleswaram barrage (p. 206) and Kistna Anicut (p. 208). Dowleswaram barrage was conceived and constructed by Cotton. http://www.archive. <http://www.archive.org/details/provincialgeogra03holluoft> org/details/provincialgeogra03holluoft Volume 4, by H. T. White, deals with Burma (1913-23) http://www.archive. <http://www.archive.org/details/provincialgeogra04holluoft> org/details/provincialgeogra04holluoft The Burmese Railways, all metre gauge, are presented in pp. 166-169. There is a photograph of a railway station (p. 167) with a spacious platform and a train with wooden carriages, the likes of which I have seen on SIR in my childhood; and another "on the Southern Shan State Railway" (p. 168) with the line barely visible amidst thatched structures. Goteik viaduct is mentioned in p. 167. The concluding paragraph in p. 169 fascinates me: "Burmans take kindly to railway traveling and on average the whole population travels by rail twice a year. Except in the neighbourhood of Rangoon, trains do not run very frequently. In some places there is only one train a day in each direction; in others there are not more than two or three services a week. The easy-going Burman sits contentedly on theplatform for half the day awaiting the arrival of the fire-carriage (mi-yata)." That was written around 1923. My wife's grandfather, who had worked there in the late 1930's as the agent of a Tamil "banker", an euphemism for a money-lender, was often stranded in up-country places where a debtor had delayed interest payment; a strict vegetarian, he would starve watching local Burmese travellers cook and consume their non-vegetarian food on the platform as all waited patiently for hours for the arrival of the train. - R. Sivaramakrishnan. 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