Google doodles 160th anniversary of India’s first passenger train
16 Apr 2013
Google today marked the 160th anniversary of India's first passenger train journey with a doodle on its India home page.
On 16 April 1853, the first passenger train chugged out from Bori Bunder in Bombay to Thane, covering a distance of 34 km in 21 minutes. The service was hauled by three locomotives, Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan.
The Google doodle shows a locomotive train which replaces the first 'O' of the word Google.
The search giant takes its visitors on a short journey into the history of Indian Railways, with a train pulled by a steam engine along the palm-lined railway track.
Though the history of rail transportation in India goes back to 1832, it was only in 1853-54 that that first passenger train service was launched by two railway companies, Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and East Indian Railway (EIR).
However, the first train for localised hauling of canal construction material become operational on 22 December 1851 in Roorkee.
India has the fourth-largest railway network in the world and the largest in Asia.
