Historic Railway Board Building, Shimla

Railway Board Building in Shimla is one of the finest architectural works by British architects. The Railway Board Building in Shimla is on the way to Mall Road near Dayanand Public School, Shimla. One can easily see this beautiful building, as it is very near to Mall Road and Summerhill too. These days we also have Passport Office in this Railway Board Building.

Railway Board Building in Shimla was built in the year 1896-1897 by a Bombay based firm, Richardson and Cruddas. The construction cost that was done on Railway Board Building at that time was about Rs. 4,08, 476 which was a very big sum 105 years back. Earlier this site served as the residences known as ‘Herbert House and Low Ville’. Then it was rented by the government to run Public Works Department and then the Railway Board and Commerce Department. Finally all these were demolished and this beautiful Railway Board Building was constructed here.

The building has four storeys from the road, provided with very beautiful, artistic iron stairs. Climbing up the floors through these stairs gives a royal touch of ‘Raj Mahal’. In British era the buildings were constructed keeping security feature in priority. Railway Board Building is thus a cast iron and steel structure, in order to make the building fire resistant. However, on February 10th, 2001 a fire blaze struck the top floor of the Railway Board Building, but due to its maximum fire resistant architecture its original features were not lost in house restoration.

Looking into the fantastic construction scheme employed in the Railway Board Building in Shimla by the Britishers at that time, the present day Secretariat of the Govt. of H.P. at Ellerslie and Office of the Army Training Command also have employed the same construction scheme so as to make the buildings long lasting and fire resistant. The Railway board building provides a good practical example for the students of reputed architectural schools and IIT’s in India.

Post Comment:

Notify me by email when others post comments to this article.

Do not include your name, "with regards" etc in the comment. Write detailed comment, relevant to the topic.

No HTML formatting and links to other web sites are allowed.

This is a strictly moderated site. Absolutely no spam allowed.

Name:	Sign In to fill automatically.
Email:	(Will not be published, but required to validate comment)
Website:	We will link to your website, if the comment is worth keeping!
	Type the numbers and letters shown on the left.