Who can forget the thrill when we opened Bombay
Central? It was a piece of perfect organisation.’’
So remembered C S Smith, a former employee of the Bombay-Baroda and Central India (BB & CI) Railway Company (which became Western Railway), who joined the service in 1905.
Seventy-four years ago, Smith was witness to the birth of what was then the largest railway station in India—Bombay Central Terminus—when it was opened by the then governor of Bombay, Frederick Sykes, on December 18, 1930.
Built in just over two years at the cost of a then staggering Rs 1.56 crore, the station was designed to replace the existing mainline terminus at Colaba, which closed just two weeks later on January 1, 1931.
Bombay Central became—and remains—an indispensable link between the city and the rest of the nation, and a unique part of the city’s architectural heritage.
This year, December 18 marks a year of celebration for Western Railway as the station’s 75th year of operation.
Bombay Central was designed by an eminent British architect, Claude Batley, a JJ School of Art professor and the founder of a renowned Bombay firm of architects called Gregson, Batley and King.
In his unusual but successful design for the three-storey station, Batley departed from the received wisdom of how to integrate a railway station within a city.
Batley placed the station building just north of Bellasis Bridge in a garden set back from Lamington Road and placed the entrance at the end of a vista with a garden on both sides.
The quadrangle formed by the flanking wings also struck a new note in railway architecture not previously attempted in India.
The portico was designed using details from traditional architecture but the siting of the building was based on Mughal planning principles.
The main entrance opened onto a spacious concourse with platforms on one side and waiting rooms, Hindu and Muslim refreshment rooms and first- and second-class buffet rooms on the other.
On the first floor, Batley planned additional waiting rooms and refreshment rooms that would serve European cuisine.
The second floor was for retiring rooms for passengers spending only a short time in Bombay.
For third-class passengers, Batley included a large waiting hall equipped with refreshment stalls.
He also planned a new suburban line station at Bellasis Road (now Jehangir Bomani Behram Marg) alongside Bombay Central. The two stations were connected by foot overbridges to allow arriving passengers convenient transit to electric suburban trains for onward local journeys.
Construction work began in earnest on April 25, 1928, but the foundation stone was laid a month earlier on March 11 by Sir Ernest Jackson of the BB & CI Railway.
In a groove beneath it, Jackson first placed a brass cylinder containing the names of various railway officers in charge of the project, together with a handful of newly-minted one-rupee and anna coins.
They have laid there untouched ever since.
ANCIENT AND MODERN
Seventy-four years on, Mumbai Central remains a curious mixture of the ancient and the modern, a tide-marker of the changes that have transfigured the rest of the city.
Automatic vending machines for drinking water, a UTI Bank ATM and computerised passenger reservations counters are some of the recent additions to the station’s interior.
Instead of ‘Hindu and Muslim refreshment counters’ there’s a multi-cuisine Food Plaza with McDonald’s and Desi Deli under one roof, alongside other stalls serving beverages and snacks.
But in a garden just outside the eastern side of the station still rests an antique train engine called the ‘Little Red Horse’ built in 1929 at a cost of Rs 34,423.
And, of course, Mumbai Central retains the honour of running some of the oldest and most prestigious trains in India, such as the Frontier Mail and the Mumbai-Delhi Rajdhani Express.