India’s first railway is disappearing bit by bit. Can we save what’s left?

education August 27, 2026

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway – the GIPR – is the railway that operated India’s first commercial passenger line between Bombay and Thane in 1853. The Bombay-Thane line was not merely India’s first passenger railway route. It was the beginning of a system that transformed the country. The railway that began with three locomotives, 14 coaches and about 400 passengers on April 16, 1853. eventually grew into the vast Indian Railways network.

Today’s Central Railway suburban system in Mumbai still runs across much of that original landscape. That continuity is extraordinary. We should be proud of it. But pride cannot simply mean celebrating the first train every April 16 and then allowing the physical evidence of that story to disappear year after year.

This August, that question has arrived at Sion.

A portion of the old Sion railway station, on the original Bombay-Thane line of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, is being dismantled to make way for railway expansion. Among the elements that could disappear along with the old station hut (used as station manager’s cabin) are old iron roof brackets bearing the imprint of the GIPR era.