Mangalore Central railway station

Mangalore Central railway station (officially Mangaluru Central railway station)(station code: MAQ ) is an NSG–3 category Indian railway station in Palakkad railway division of Southern Railway zone. It is the main railway terminus in the city of Mangalore which lies in the heart of the city. It is one of the major railway stations in Karnataka state and it is the biggest terminal station under Palakkad railway division. There is also another railway station named Mangalore Junction railway station, previously known as Kankanady railway station. The Mangalore region provides the highest freight revenue to the Palakkad division, which sums up to 90 per cent of the total revenue which the Palakkad division generates. Mangalore Central comes under the Southern Railway and also provides connectivity for Konkan Railway and South Western Railway of the Indian Railways. It is one of the 5 central railway stations of India.

History
Mangalore Railway Station presently known as Mangalore Central, had celebrated a quiet centenary in 2007. Though there are no exact records to prove that the railway station was opened in 1907 and the first train services commenced the same year, if one goes by the foundation stone on a quaint little guard house at the northern-end of the railway bridge across the Netravathi which says “The last rivet was put in position and the bridge formally declared completed by H.E. Sir Arthur Lawley. KCMG, GCIE, Governor of Madras on the 4th November 1907,” one can conclude that the train services commenced somewhere around this time. Though some records say that the first train that chugged on the newly constructed Netravathi bridge on 4 November 1907 came from Kallikote in Kerala, records with the Southern Railways say that the first train to be introduced in the zone, train number-1, ran its maiden journey between erstwhile Madras and Mangalore port in 1914, reducing the voyage of 1024 nautical miles via Cape Comorin to 550 miles.

This broad gauge railway route was formed mainly for the transportation of world famous Mangalore tiles to Madras Harbour to be exported by ships. Thus the same train returned after one week as train No.2. containing 3 compartments with Mangalore tiles and the fourth one with passengers and postal mailbags. The same train is the present No.6001/6002 Chennai Central-Mangalore Mail. The Mangalore Railway Station used to be the last station connecting Mangalore to the state of Kerala in the south and to the rest of the country. No doubt, the first train services in the region opened a new chapter in the history of the area and paved way for much progress. Mangalore was then in the Madras province under the British rule. The construction of the Netravathi Bridge in Ullal using 16 spans of 150 feet length each was taken up around this time. A few years later, in 1929, the Grand Trunk Express was introduced that ran for 104 hours through the length of the west coast, from Mangalore to Peshawar in Pakistan. In those days, it was the longest rail route in the country. In 1930, Mangalore was made a permanent station from a trial station. A glance at the railway history of the nation will make anyone outrightly conclude that Mangalore railway station has been a much neglected station over the years. If train services in the nation commenced in 1853, in Mangalore it arrived 55 years later. Now though it is over hundred years since the railway station was established, we see not much progress except a few changes. The old building was renovated just over a decade ago. Except for some developmental work there has been not much of a progress to boast of.

It was during T.A. Pai’s tenure as Railway Minister in 1971 that the first direct link train No. 131/132 Jayanthi Janatha Express from Mangalore to Delhi commenced with the Mangalore Railway Station as the starting point. Apart from the Konkan Railway, even the Mangalore-Jammu Tavi Navyug Express is George Fernandes’s gift to his hometown Mangalore. A metre-gauge railway track, built through the Western Ghats, connected Mangalore with Hassan. The metre-gauge track was converted to a broad-gauge track connecting Mangalore to Bangalore via Hassan. The re-gauged track was opened to freight traffic in May 2006 and passenger traffic in December 2007. The track network in the Mangalore area is based on a triangular pattern, with Mangalore Central, Mangalore Junction and the Netravati River railway bridge at the vertices of the triangle.

A railway siding leads from Mangalore Central to the historic old Railway Goods-Shed in the old Port, Bunder area of Mangalore city.

Location
Mangalore Central railway station is located at Old Kent road, Hampankatta. The other major railway station in the city, Mangalore Junction located at Darbar Hill, Padil, Mangalore 575007.

Services
Mangalore Central has many trains originated and terminated. Popular trains includes Mangaluru-Madgaon Vande Bharat Express, Mangaluru Central–Thiruvananthapuram Vande Bharat Express (via Alappuzha),  Vivek Express (Santragachi), Chennai Mail, Malabar Express etc Southern Railway connects Kanyakumari, Chennai, Kacheguda, Bengaluru. South Western Railway connects Bengaluru, Vijayapura. Konkan Railway connects Mumbai