His stories instruct and entertain, bringing the past of Indian Railways alive in the present. Did you know that India's first steam engine never ran on tracks and was actually used to run driving mills in a factory? That the maximum speed of the first commercial train in India was 4.5 miles/hour?

The fascinating story of the network that made modern India The railways brought modernity to India. Its vast network connected the far corners of the subcontinent, making travel, communication and commerce simpler than ever before. Even more importantly, the railways played a large part in the making of the nation: by connecting historically and geographically disparate regions and people, it forever changed the way Indians lived and thought, and eventually made a national identity possible. This engagingly written, anecdotally told history captures the immense power of a business behemoth as well as the romance of train travel; tracing the growth of the railways from the 1830s (when the first plans were made) to Independence, Bibek Debroy and his co-authors recount how the railway network was built in India and how it grew to become a lifeline that still weaves the nation together. This latest volume in The Story of Indian Business series will delight anyone interested in finding out more about the Indian Railways.

This handbook provides an indispensable reference guide to most aspects of the history of India’s railways. The secondary literature is surveyed, primary sources identified, statistical and cartographic data discussed, and a massive bibliography made available.

Following an experimental railway track at Chintadripet, in 1835, the battle for India's first railroad was fought bitterly between John Chapman's Great Indian Peninsular Railway and Rowland MacDonald Stephenson's East India Railway Company, which was merged with Dwarkanauth Tagore's Great Western of Bengal Railway. Even at the height of the Mutiny of 1857, Bahadur Shah Zafar promised Indian owned railway tracks for native merchants if Badshahi rule was restored in Delhi. From Jules Verne to Rudyard Kipling to Mark Twain to Rabindranath Tagore to Nirad C. Chaudhuri to R.K. Narayan and Ruskin Bond-the aura of Indian trains and railway stations have enchanted many writers and poets. With iconic cinematography from The Apu Trilogy, Aradhana, Sonar Kella, Sholay, Gandhi, Dil Se, Parineeta, Barfi, Gangs of Wasseypur, and numerous others, Indian cinema has paved the way for mythical railroads in the national psyche. The Great Indian Railways takes us on a historic adventure through many junctions of India's hidden railway legends, for the first time in a book replete with anecdotes from imperial politics, European and Indian accounts, the battlefronts of the Indian nationalist movement, Indian cinema, songs, advertisements, and much more, in an ever-expanding cultural biography of the Great Indian Railways. Dubbed as 'one of a kind' this awe-inspiring saga is 'compulsive reading.' 'In this fascinating cultural history, Arup K Chatterjee charts the extraordinary journey of the Indian Railways, from the laying of the very first sleeper to the first post-Independence bogey. It evokes our collective accumulation of those innumerable memories of platform chai and rail-gaadi stories, bringing alive through myriad voices and tales the biography of one of India's defining public institutions.' – Shashi Tharoor, Author, M.P., Lok Sabha 'The Great Indian Railways is a fascinating and well-researched cultural biography of the Indian Railways-those intricate arteries of the soul of India, as have been experienced, written, filmed, and dreamed. We cannot all travel by rail to know India, as Gandhiji did, but we can and should read this book!' – Tabish Khair, Author, Professor

The acclaimed author recounts his epic journey across Europe and Asia in this international bestselling classic of travel literature: “Compulsive reading” (Graham Greene). In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on a four-month journey by train from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In The Great Railway Bazaar, he records in vivid detail and penetrating insight the many fascinating incidents, adventures, and encounters of his grand, intercontinental tour. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.