Native Workmen leaving Workshops after work [Jamalpur Railway Workshops].

Photograph of workmen leaving work at Jamalpur Railway Workshop taken by an unknown photographer in c.1897 from the Elgin Collection: 'Presented to His Excellency the Earl of Elgin & Kincardine...as a Memento of His Excellency's Visit to the East Indian Railway Workshops at Jamalpur November 30th 1897'. The main workshops for the East India Railway Company were built in 1862 at Jamalpur. The workshops were situated here as there were plenty of skilled mechanics at Monghyr, an industrial town renowned for manufacturing iron goods, guns, pistols etc. The workshops were designed to undertake every aspect of the overhaul and repair of the Company’s railway locomotives and from the 1880s new locomotives were also built here. By the 1880s the workshops employed 5,000 people and by 1906 the number was close to 10,000. Jamalpur was the first of the major railway towns in India, built and administered by the East India Railway Company and populated entirely by railway employees.

Photographer: Unknown

Medium: Photographic print

Date: 1897