Sapt Kranti Express: Ruling the tracks with EMD Power - Keshav Singh

He is the person the Godavari districts owe their lives to. His projects alone converted a large, nondescript area ravaged by famines, to the rice bowl of India and one of the most fertile agricultural lands in the country!!
Interestingly, Sir Cotton helmed another railway project in the Madras Presidency. This was a railway line about 6 miles long on the east coast of the Godavari river near Rajahmundry, during the construction of the Anicut on the Godavari. Not only is this the second documented use of railways in the country, but it was also the first double line railway in the country, having been constructed around 1844.
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Alas! His love for India and his favorable attitude towards the Indian people, placed him in a bad position with his superiors who tried to impeach him several times. Despite all this and several health issues, he returned to India and lightened up the lives of several million people with his engineering works.

Oh, the '180 years of Indian Railways'? I was feeling very nostalgic and had to put that up. :)
We had tried searching around Chintadripet and sifting through presidency gazettes during my engineering, hoping to at least get a hint of where the Redhill railroad ran. Internet wasn't really that helpful then and we had to rely on books and a few enthusiastic staff in the Egmore station. Sadly, nothing from that era remains today and other than some intelligent guessing, we could not really get any solid information. :(
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But on the upside, we did gather a considerable amount of information about IR's history in general. I was surprised to learn that there used to be railways in many places that I used to go through regularly!! Even the Andaman islands were home to railways once!!
May be it's just good for satisfying my curiosity, but IR's history, the railway history of each place in the country, is very fascinating and speaks volumes about the struggles the British and the locals had to face, so that IR is the giant network it is today! Just the Pune-Mumbai railway route needed the sacrifice from over 25000 Indian workers and the designers of the route, who all perished in building the challenging ghat route. It is such efforts lost in the annals of history, which should be brought into the light to give us a chance to appreciate the brave souls who gave us this vast network!!