3-011-688 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Arrival of the Governor-General of India at the Lahore railway station, 1864. Engraving of a photograph by Messrs. Raybon and West. '...this visit was made an occasion for great festivities...The Punjaub...is the great bulwark of British India...[It] has not only a population of 15,000,000...immediately subject to our rule, but it contains within its borders 7,000,000 of people owning fealty to native chiefs, making the whole population for whose peace and well-being the representatives of Queen Victoria are responsible in the Punjaub nearly the same in number as the inhabitants of Great Britain...The Punjaub Railway is 252 miles in length...[and] constitutes the crown of that great railway system, 2200 miles in length, which will unite Calcutta in the Bay of Bengal with Kurrachee on the Arabian Sea. The Central Railway station...has been built so as to answer in some degree the purposes of a fortress, should the occasion arise, as well as a railway station...it [has] long and massive walls, pierced with loopholes for musketry, flanked by bomb-proof towers and crowned by minarets...Here, in times of danger, the European community could retire, and defend both themselves and the railway against the enemy'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.