| Dear Sir We hardly intend to miss the opportunities to see the Museum, Palaces, Forts, Ancient remains of socio-religious and cultural structures besides the Natural Beauties, whenever we happen to visit a city or town for the first time, whether within the country or it is in the abroad. Why? This sublime and eternal quest to know the yester-efforts of our ancestors are somewhat inherently and organically more generic than volubly argumentative, they may be either the ruling leaders,patrons,connissers of the time or those being the ruled - the engineers, the architects, the craftsmen, the guilds and the artisans. Digging into the memory line, I recollect a classic article, named “Our Heritage”, taken from the selections of my middle school English Textbook, written by the eminent exponent of Indian Heritage and Heritage Tourism Movement, Shri Mulk Raj Anand, who first made me acquainted with the very word “Heritage” in an indisputably simple but a mystic fashion in following words. “...................there was once only one God called The Brahma and He wanted to be many, and this whole and diverse Universe came into existence. Since everything was created by Him, there is an innate intrinsic desire within all of us to unite with Him”. This is the ethos of Indian Heritage & Culture, Shri Anand expounded in his theory from father, grandfather and so on till we ultimately reach to the Param Pita, The Brahma. This awareness publication of “Our Heritage” is intended to acknowledge and pay soulful homage to the efforts of our forefathers who are silently lying in the layers of present form of this beautiful civilization we are living in now with comfort, peace and prosperity. As some benchmark, pre-independance heritage items, both movables and immovables have been attempted to present but shades of some of the post-independence items have naturally appeared for completion and continuity of illustrations of the subject and collaborators’ designs due to technological subserviénce in absence of strong R&D infrastructure in the post-independance intial years in India. ‘Indian Railways’ Heritage Buildings and Bridges’ as presented in the annual workshop on Railways’ Heritage in NAIR (previously RSC), Vadodara by Sh.V.N.Mathur, Member Traffic (Retd.) have been put in juxtaposition with those of BB & CI(WR) and GIP(CR) items.They are ancestors of present WCR. This will encourage our readers, engineers and users to compare and identify analogically & analytically the unique Heritage features of the existing items developed by then available resources, skills as well as the local constraints of the British Indian and Princely State Railways. I further acknowledge the contributions, guidance, encouragement and help provided by Shri Piyush Mathur, CPRO/WCR and his section, Shri S.K. Prasad, Chief Heritage Officer/WCR., Shri. Kaushal Kishore, Chief Engr.(TP)/WCR and Ex-member of Heritage Core Group, Shri.R.N.Sunkar, Chief Bridge Engr./WCR. Shri C.L. Vishwakarma,SSE/Mechanical and Shri Yogesh Chaure, JE of Mechanical deptt/HQ who put in tireless hard work in making this first publication possible by turning the nights into the days. I convey my Gratitudes and Courtesies to all those writers, authorities whose valuable articles and photographs have enlightened the contents of this awareness publication of Heritage section in WCR/HQ. “Nothing succeeds like success” is the proverbial truth, but not without the love and compassion. I earnestly appeal to detach from any strange fits of sudden passion if flashes in the “Marabar Caves” while “A Passage to India” and disclaim the legal tangles unlike Dr. Aziz while making cut-paste attempts of this first awareness publication. Finally I pray to the Almighty that all of us enjoy the pervasive blessings together that our forefathers keep showering on us in slumber. With grateful thanks, Sir.
(SHIBAJI MONDAL) Dy.CME (Heritage), WCR Click here for West Central Railway Heritage Portal ·Indian Railways ·West Central Railway | |
