The story of a remarkable railway artefact, Lord Mayo’s special train, and the moment Bombay and Calcutta were joined by rail
There are some railway artefacts that immediately tell us what they are. Others invite questions.
When I visited the Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE) at Jamalpur as a probationer , I came across one such object: an enormous heraldic insignia mounted on a wall. I was surprised by the decorative details in the object and this invited my curiosity to look deep into this object’s history.
The object is striking. A crowned shield is flanked by a lion and a unicorn, surrounded by elaborate gilded foliage. Across the emblem appear the familiar royal mottoes Honi soit qui mal y pense and Dieu et mon droit.
But it was the small plaque beneath it that transformed an interesting piece of railway ornamentation into a remarkable historical survivor:
“Cast in Jamalpur Shops, this insignia decorated the special train of Lord Mayo, the fourth Viceroy of India in 1870.”
That single sentence opens a window into one of the most important moments in the early history of Indian Railways.
An insignia from the age of steam
According to the history published by IRIMEE, the object is about four and a half feet high and made of solid cast iron. The institute records that it was cast at the Jamalpur Shops and that it decorated the special train of Lord Mayo, the fourth Viceroy of India, in 1870.
The same account identifies it as the Official Insignia of IRIMEE and preserves the object as part of the institution’s heritage.
The surviving insignia is unmistakably based upon British royal heraldry. At its centre is the Royal Arms, with the crowned lion and unicorn as supporters and the Garter surrounding the shield. The Garter bears the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, while Dieu et mon droit appears on the scroll below.
These were not merely decorative motifs. They were among the most recognisable symbols of the British monarchy.
Placed upon the special train of the Viceroy, therefore, the emblem would have transformed a railway vehicle into something more than a means of transport. It became a travelling representation of the authority of the Crown. And the year in which it appeared was no ordinary year in the history of Indian Railways.
Jamalpur in 1870
The story begins at Jamalpur.
The East Indian Railway established its great workshop there in 1862. Within a relatively short period, Jamalpur developed from a railway workshop into one of the most important engineering centres of the East Indian Railway.
The workshop was already capable of sophisticated engineering work in the nineteenth century. A rolling mill was established at Jamalpur in 1870, while the formal railway foundry is generally dated to 1893.
This chronology creates an intriguing question.
IRIMEE specifically records that the insignia was cast at the Jamalpur Shops in 1870. Yet histories of the workshop usually date its first formal railway foundry to 1893.
The most cautious explanation of this is that the 1870 casting was undertaken in one of the earlier workshop facilities rather than the later dedicated railway foundry. The precise shop in which the insignia was produced has not yet been established.
Whatever the exact manufacturing arrangement, the surviving object is an extraordinary reminder of the capabilities that were already developing at Jamalpur less than a decade after the workshop began functioning.
It also represents an important aspect of Indian railway history that is sometimes overlooked: the railway was not simply importing locomotives, equipment and technology from Britain. Its workshops were progressively becoming centres of manufacturing, repair and engineering skill within India.
Lord Mayo and the railways
Richard Bourke, the Earl of Mayo, became Viceroy of India in 1869.
His tenure coincided with a major change in the direction of railway development in India. The railway network was expanding rapidly, and the Government was increasingly considering railways as an instrument not merely of commerce but also of administration, communication and imperial integration.
Mayo himself recognised the transformative power of the new technology.
The railway was physically reducing the distances between the major centres of British India.And in 1870, one of the greatest gaps in the railway network was finally closed.
The railway that joined Bombay and Calcutta
By the late 1860s, the East Indian Railway had reached Jubbulpore from the direction of Allahabad. From the west, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway was pushing across central India from Bombay.
The two systems were approaching one another.
At Jubbulpore, the final gap was closed.
The result was extraordinary for its time: an uninterrupted railway route connecting Bombay and Calcutta, the two great commercial and administrative centres on opposite sides of the Indian subcontinent.
The railway connection was completed in early March 1870. Contemporary railway chronology commonly gives 7 March 1870 as the date on which the through connection was achieved. But the formal ceremony associated with the event took place on 8 March 1870. And it was a ceremony worthy of the occasion.
Lord Mayo’s Special arrives at Jubbulpore
One of the most valuable accounts of the event comes from Robert Maitland Brereton, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway engineer who had played a major role in extending the railway towards Jubbulpore.
His later memoir provides a remarkable description of the events of March 1870.
The Duke of Edinburgh had travelled to Jubbulpore from the east. Lord Mayo and the Governor of Bombay were travelling towards Jubbulpore from the west.
The plan was for the two special trains to meet at the newly created junction.
But railway reality intervened. The Viceroy’s train was delayed. The Duke arrived first and waited. As the hours passed, daylight disappeared.
The grand ceremony that had been planned for daylight was eventually transformed into something rather more dramatic.
Torches were lit. The assembled dignitaries waited in the darkness. And finally, Lord Mayo’s Special appeared.
Brereton records that the Viceroy’s train had been hauled by some of the newest and most impressive locomotives available to the Great Indian Peninsula Railway.
There was, however, an amusing reminder that even the most prestigious railway journey was still subject to the limitations of steam technology. The new locomotives suffered from boiler priming, and the train took approximately twelve hours to cover the 128 miles between Hurda and Jubbulpore.
The grandeur of the occasion and the imperfections of the machinery existed side by side.
The silver key
Once Lord Mayo arrived, the ceremony could finally take place.
A special silver key had been prepared for the occasion. Lord Mayo used a silver-plated hammer to strike the key joining the rails of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway and the East Indian Railway. The Duke of Edinburgh then added his own ceremonial blow.
It was a remarkably symbolic act.
Two railway systems, built under different companies and approaching from opposite sides of the subcontinent, had finally become one continuous railway route.
The physical joining of the rails represented something much larger. For the first time, Bombay and Calcutta were connected by a continuous railway. The railway had crossed the Indian peninsula.
And somewhere in this story was the Jamalpur insignia
The railway’s own institutional history states that the large cast-iron insignia was made at Jamalpur and decorated Lord Mayo’s special train in 1870.
We can independently establish that Lord Mayo travelled in a special train to Jubbulpore in March 1870.
We can also independently establish that his train participated in the historic ceremony joining the Great Indian Peninsula Railway and the East Indian Railway.
What we have not yet found is a contemporary photograph or drawing that unmistakably shows this particular insignia mounted on the train at Jubbulpore.
That distinction is important.
It would be too strong to claim that the surviving photograph of the insignia proves that it was physically mounted on the train during the Jubbulpore ceremony. The more accurate statement is the one preserved by IRIMEE: the insignia decorated Lord Mayo’s special train in 1870. That institutional provenance is remarkable enough.
Why such a magnificent emblem?
The answer probably lies in the nature of the train itself.
Lord Mayo’s Special was not an ordinary passenger service. It carried the Viceroy of India at a ceremony attended by the Duke of Edinburgh and prominent Indian rulers and officials. The Royal Arms on the train would have made a powerful visual statement. The lion and unicorn, the Crown, the Garter and the royal mottoes were symbols immediately associated with the British monarchy.
The Viceroy was the representative of the Crown in India. The railway was one of the most visible instruments of Britain’s expanding administrative and economic reach. Putting the Royal Arms on the Viceroy’s train brought all three together: the Crown, the Viceroy and the railway.
The train itself became a travelling symbol of imperial authority.
The irony of Jamalpur
There is another layer to the story.
The emblem represented the British Crown. Yet it was made at Jamalpur, in India, by the engineering establishment of the East Indian Railway.
This was a period when Jamalpur was rapidly acquiring the technical capabilities that would eventually make it one of the most famous railway workshops in the country.
The insignia therefore embodies two sides of the railway story.
On one side is the imperial world of Queen Victoria, Lord Mayo and the Royal Arms. On the other is the growing technical capability of an Indian railway workshop and its workforce. The object is consequently not merely an imperial souvenir. It is also an artefact of India’s early industrial history.
A railway symbol that outlived the Empire
The most remarkable part of the story may be what happened afterwards.
The insignia survived. The East Indian Railway disappeared as an independent company. The British Raj ended. The railway system was reorganised. Jamalpur’s workshop evolved into a major engineering institution.
The training establishment that eventually became IRIMEE developed into one of Indian Railways’ important centres for mechanical and electrical engineering education. And through all these changes, this enormous cast-iron emblem remained.
The object that once decorated a Viceroy’s special train eventually became part of the heritage of an independent Indian railway institution. The symbolism changed. The object did not.
Seeing the insignia today
Standing before the insignia at Jamalpur, it is easy to see only an elaborate Victorian coat of arms.
But the object carries a much larger story. It takes us back to March 1870, when a railway line was being completed across the heart of India. It takes us to Jubbulpore, where the Duke of Edinburgh waited for Lord Mayo’s delayed train. It takes us to a ceremony conducted in darkness and torchlight. It takes us to the moment when a silver hammer struck a silver key and two railway systems were ceremonially joined. And it takes us back to Jamalpur, where railway engineers and craftsmen had produced a massive cast-iron emblem for the Viceroy’s train.
More than 150 years later, the railway itself has changed beyond recognition.
But the emblem remains.
A photograph and a question
The photograph accompanying this article was taken by me during my visit to Jamalpur while I was there for training.
What first caught my attention was the object itself.
What made me stop was the small plaque beneath it.
And what makes it worth recording today is that this is not simply an old decorative piece. It is a surviving physical link to one of the defining moments of nineteenth-century Indian railway history.
The photograph cannot show us Lord Mayo’s train. It cannot show us the torches burning at Jubbulpore on that March evening in 1870. It cannot show us the silver hammer striking the key. But it can show us something that has survived from that world.
A four-and-a-half-foot cast-iron insignia, made at Jamalpur, which according to the railway’s own institutional history once travelled with the Viceroy.
Perhaps that is even more evocative.
The train is gone.
The ceremony is gone.
The empire is gone.
But the emblem remains.
References
- Indian Railway Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE), Jamalpur — Krishno Jamalpur. Institutional history containing the description and provenance of the insignia.
IRIMEE — Krishno Jamalpur - IRIMEE Journal, 2021 — Jamalpur history and the Official Insignia of IRIMEE.
IRIMEE Journal 2021 - G. S. P. Rao, Jamalpur: The Town the British Built. A detailed history of the Jamalpur workshop and its technical institution.
Jamalpur: The Town the British Built - Robert Maitland Brereton, A World History of Railway Cultures / Brereton’s account of the 1870 Jubbulpore connection. Contemporary first-hand recollections of the railway connection and Lord Mayo’s train.
- Rail Enthusiasts’ Society — account of the Jubbulpore ceremony, including the contemporary Pioneer report describing the arrival of Lord Mayo’s Special and the torch-lit ceremony.
Rail Enthusiasts’ Society — Jubbulpore Railway Connection, 1870 - Indian Engineering Heritage — Railways, Indian National Academy of Engineering. Background on Jamalpur’s development and the later railway foundry.
Indian Engineering Heritage — Railways
Author’s note
The principal historical identification of the insignia in this article follows the institutional record preserved by IRIMEE. Where the surviving documentary evidence does not conclusively establish a detail—particularly the precise location and circumstances in which the insignia was mounted on Lord Mayo’s train—the article has deliberately avoided presenting inference as fact.