Current Science

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The Madras Journal of Literature and Science (MJLS, 1836, 4) carries a four-page article entitled ‘An account of a railroad laid in the Vaddavaur district’. This article refers to a temporary, c. 500-yard long railroad built in Vaddavaur (read as Vadavãr) located at the confluence of Kôllidam and Vadavãru rivers. This railroad was laid to move building materials necessary for the construction of a dam – referred as the Vadavãr dam – supervised by the Madras construction engineer Arthur Thomas Cotton in the 1830s. Since this article was published in the July–October issue of MJLS 1836, the logical deduction would be that this railroad was completed before July 1836. This human-pushed railway, therefore, precedes the presently recognized earliest goods-transporting Red Hills Railway, at least by a year, which operated between Chintãdaripét and Red Hills in Madras from 1837. The 1836 MJLS article on the Vadavãr-railroad provides fascinating details of railway engineering of the day in the Madras Presidency that are highlighted in the present note.

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