Train Descending Beautiful Bhor Ghat in Rain | Pune - Mumbai Scenic Rail Route

Train Descending Bhor ghat.
The discovery of a route to make a motorable pass in Bor Ghat came after information was provided by a local Dhangar tribesman called Shigroba. Later, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway laid a railway line from Mumbai to Pune. The section through Bhor Ghat with 28 tunnels, and old bridges was opened in 1863.The Ghat opened Mumbai to the Deccan plains of Peninsular India.
Building a railway over the Bhor ghat was an exercise in imperial engineering, as noted in an article in Engineering Magazine in 1899, where it was described as "a more certain and enduring form of attack than military power, and that the railway, the canal and harbour are the real weapons in the conquest of a colony.
The number of staff during construction increased from 10,000 in 1856, over 20,000 in 1857 to a peak of 42,000 in January 1861. The original incline included building 25 tunnels, eight arched masonry viaducts, blasting and removing of 54 mio cubic feet (1.5 mio m³) of hard rock and building embankments from 67.5 mio cubic feet (1.9 million m³) of material at a total cost of £ 1,100,000, i.e. £ 70,000 per mile.
The project was marred by industrial unrest as well as disease. The first contractor awarded the section, William Frederick Faviell, mistreated his workers and underpaid his subcontractors, leading to riots by the workers that resulted in the death of one of the European managers attempting to subdue the unrest. Following a British Government investigation, Faviell's contract was taken away from him and granted to Solomon Tredwell, who arrived in 1859 to restart the works. Tredwell died within days, of dysentery or cholera. His wife, Alice then took over the contract, completing it with success by 1863.
During the grand ceremony at the official opening, which was held at Khandala near the highest point of the incline on 21 April 1863, the governor of Bombay Presidency, Sir Bartle Frere, gave a speech, in which he felt "assured, that in the future ages the works of our English engineers on these Ghauts will take the place of those works of their demigods, the great cave temples of western India, which have so long, to the simple inhabitants of these lands, been the type of superhuman strength, and of more than mortal constructive skill.
The Bhor Ghat Railway cuts a distance of 21 km between Khandala and Palasdari. There are 28 tunnels across the railway ghat.[citation needed] This ghat comes under the proposed Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridors. During construction of this ghat almost 25,000 workers lost their lives due to steepness of this ghat. Initially steam traction was used to haul trains across this ghat. In 1929-30 the Great Indian Peninsula Railway electrified Bombay (Mumbai) - Poona (Pune) section with a 1.5 kV DC system. This led to end of steam era on this ghat. The electrification system of the Mumbai - Pune section completed its conversion to a 25 kV 50 Hz AC system in June 2015.
The first DC locomotives were EF/1 class locomotives (later classified as WCG1) for freight trains. Later Express trains were hauled by EA/1 class locomotives (later classified as WCP1).

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