The force of the impact may also have set off explosives that were being transported with soldiers heading towards Assam, a state that has recently been the focus of insurrection. Passengers were hurled through the open windows and into the darkness while the impact sent the engine of the express train flying into the air. The outcome, however, was apparent in all its horror.The two trains collided at 1.55am local time, causing a terrible noise that could be heard for miles. At the remote station of Gaisal, the two trains were supposed to pass.
Precisely how both trains managed to join the same line with such lethal consequence was last night not clear. The Brahmaputra Mail was racing towards New Delhi, India’s capital, while the Awadh-Assam Express was heading north-east towards Guwahati in the state of Assam. IT WAS before dawn, and on board the two trains the passengers were dozing on wooden seats in the sticky, cramped heat of the Bengali night.

The immense skein of pilgrimages is part of the unity of India and the trains have made pilgrimages easier.I have journeyed by rail to many parts of India, and despite yesterday’s horrific scenes at Gaisal Station, the rail journey remains perhaps the surest way of getting to know the nature of the land and its people.Trevor Fishlock’s latest book about India is Cobra Road, published by John Murray.. When you leave a train you are swept along in a torrent of struggling people, porters and baggage.Many of the millions who travel by train are of course on business or off to see their families. But millions make their pilgrimages by train visiting the shrines, temples and auspicious holy places that devout Hindus and Muslims revere. An Indian once told me that when they built the stations the British made the platforms wide knowing that every Indian traveller would be seen off or greeted by at least 20 people.It is just as well, though, that the platforms are wide.

Trains arrived at stations dripping the blood of the dead, a detail that inspired the title of the best novel by an Indian about Partition, Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan.The railways were one factor in giving India a sense of itself In any city the stations are tremendous centres of activity. They were vital for the military power and commerce of the expanding Raj and many of the railways – in Khyber, the Himalayas, the Western Ghats – were marvels of imperial engineering.Mahatma Gandhi spread his freedom message by rail, endlessly criss-crossing the land and always insisting on travelling third class.The railways, too, played their terrible part in the horrors of Partition in 1947. But no one could be sure how many died because no one could say how many were in the crowded cheaper seats and were riding for nothing on the roofs.For almost a century and a half, since the first line was constructed in Bombay in the 1850s, railways have been at the heart of India’s development and saga. Wedding parties, complete with tearful brides huddled against the stinging dust, sometimes ride on roofs.In 1981, when a train fell from a bridge into a river in Bihar, the carriages were swept away like logs, and perhaps 800 people were drowned It was India’s greatest rail disaster.