Nizam's State Railway The
GIPR line connecting Bombay with Madras had bypassed the Nizam's territories. The Britishers were interested in joining the GIPR line with Hyderabad and make the Nizam incur all the expenses and pay a guaranteed interest to GIPR. On 19 May 1870 an agreement was signed by Governor General
Lord Mayo with the Nizams. As per this agreement, the new company would be owned by the Nizams and be known as Nizam's State Railway. The capital to set it up would be provided by the
Nizam, but will be constructed and operated by
Government of India through British Resident at Hyderabad. Hyderabad was connected to GIPR and a new line from
Wadi to
Secunderabad was finalised. The construction of line started on 25 March 1871 and was completed on 9 October 1874. The line was split at
Begumpet with one going to
Secunderabad and another line going to
Hyderabad. The line from Secunderabad to
Warangal was opened on 8 April 1886. Later, starting from 1889, metre-gauge lines were laid from
Manmad Junction railway station to Secunderabad, connecting Aurangabad, Jalna, Nanded and Nizamabad. Financial deterioration of NSR coupled with the need to extend the railways to
Singareni to carry coal to the GIPR forced Salar Jung to seek funds in the London financial markets. Nizam State Railways was taken over by Morton, Rose & Co, a joint stock company based in London and renamed as Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway on 27 December 1883.
Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway was formed on 27 December 1883 after the Nizam State Railways was taken over by Morton, Rose & Co. As per the agreement signed the Nizam's government had to deliver all existing railway lines free of all encumbrances to the newly formed company. The Nizams had to pay annuity for 20 years to the newly formed company. This company had ten directors out of whom only one was an Indian. The lone Indian member was Sardar Diler Jung Bahadur who was the Secretary of the Railways Department of Nizam's Government. On 1 April 1930 the NGSR was brought under the direct control of Hyderabad State with
Sir Akbar Hydari as the president. The remaining members of the board of the nationalised company were Britishers and the headquarters of H. H. Nizam's State Railways remained at London. The office was relocated to Hyderabad on 1 November 1941, as the ongoing war was making it difficult to work over such a long distance. Hyderabad was integrated with India in 1948 and on 5 November 1951 NGSR, along with GIPR and some other small railway companies were merged to form Central Railways. On 2 October 1966,
South Central Railway was carved out of Central Railway with areas of erstwhile NGSR under its jurisdiction and
Kacheguda as its headquarters. At the time of merger, the total length of Nizam State Railway system was and was the largest system in any
princely State in India. The proposal was for an initial railway line to be built from
Secunderabad Railway Station in
Hyderabad to
Wadi Junction. Nizam agreed to fund the construction expenses for the initial line, leaving subsequent branches to be financed through a variety of means. Construction commenced in 1870, and the Secunderabad-Wadi Line was completed in 1874. Between 1874 and 1889, this line was extended to
Kazipet and then to
Vijayawada. In 1879, the
Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan, Asaf Jah VI took direct control of the company, integrating it into the state bureaucracy as the state-owned Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway. This partial-nationalisation was reversed in 1883 when a management company was formed to gradually take over the lines, under the provision of a guarantee from the government of HEH, the Nizam of Hyderabad State. In 1899, the
broad gauge connection between Bezwada (Vijayawada) and
Madras (Chennai Central) opened, making rail travel between Hyderabad and Chennai possible. Railroad tracks in the state thus contained on the broad gauge, all built before 1891, and on the
metre gauge, which were opened between 1899 and 1901. The total capital
expenditure on the
Nizam's State Railway at the end of 1904 was 4.3
crores. In that year, the net earnings were nearly 28
lakhs, or about 6 percent of the
outlay. In 1916, another railway terminus,
Kachiguda Railway Station, was built to serve as the railway's headquarters. The Nizam's railway was then divided into various, directly owned
subcorporations. Each had a head official appointed by the Nizam's Railway. The profits of these rail lines were distributed by the Nizam's Railway.
Hyderabad-Godavari Valley Railway The Hyderabad-Godavari Valley Railway was a gauge railway.
John Wallace Pringle — who had recently completed surveying routes for the
Uganda railway — was appointed as the superintending engineer in 1896. The railway opened in 1896, with a line from Hyderabad city to
Manmad Junction. The railway eventually grew to of gauge track and of gauge track. The Hyderabad-Godavari Valley Railways cost 2.6 crores, and earned 7.7 lakhs net in the same year, or nearly 3 percent. In 1901 and 1902 the earnings were about 3 percent. In the early twentieth century, the
cotton industry held an important place in Nizam's Hyderabad Government as the largest export of
Hyderabad State. In 1889, a
cotton spinning mill and a
weaving mill were erected in
Aurangabad, employing a total of 700 people. In
Jalna alone there were 9
cotton ginning factories and five cotton presses, with two more ginning factories at Aurangabad and
Kannad. In 1901, the cotton presses and ginning factories employed a total of 1,016 people. The area of cultivated land under cotton in 1914 was three million
acres (12,000 km2), with most of the cotton being grown in the
Marathwada districts, where the soil was particularly well suited to it.
Expansion of Cotton industry The opening of the Hyderabad–Godavari Railway in October 1900 led to the growth of the cotton industry in the
Nizamabad,
Nander,
Parbhani and Aurangabad Districts; the line was used to transport the heavy machinery needed to open ginning and pressing factories.
Bombay buyers began to arrive in considerable numbers during the cotton season, which lasted from October to December. More land was turned over to growing cotton and machines replaced the traditional hand gins.
Grain and
pulses became more expensive, with much of the best land used for cotton farming, and
Marathwada entered a critical period of its history. == Railway lines ==