Will James Street station get facelift?

Hyderabad: Nearly 150 years after it came up, a quaint little railway station from the Nizam’s era is once again a hot topic of discussion for heritage lovers in the city. The James Street Railway Station, perhaps the lesser known cousin of the James Street Police Station, recently was fodder for a series of tweets […]

Hyderabad: Nearly 150 years after it came up, a quaint little railway station from the Nizam’s era is once again a hot topic of discussion for heritage lovers in the city.

The James Street Railway Station, perhaps the lesser known cousin of the James Street Police Station, recently was fodder for a series of tweets by heritage buffs on Hyderabad’s Twitter circles, after architect Asif Ali Khan shared photographs of the station, along with a suggestion to restore some dilapidated parts of it and also to turn a part of the unused portion, which has a separate entrance, into a coffee shop.

Whether the coffee shop suggestion or request for restoration, for which Urban Development Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar was also tagged in the tweet, will be taken up is yet to be known. The South Central Railway’s Divisional Railway Manager was the only official to respond, and that was to say that the ‘matter was forwarded’ to the DRM, Secunderabad.

The James Street Railway Station, Khan shares, was among the first stations that came up in 1874 after the Sixth Nizam Mir Mahbub Ali Khan Bahadur built a self-financed first railway line from Secunderabad to Wadi. This railway line later became the part of the Nizam State Guaranteed Railways, which in 1951 became part of the Central Railways.
The architectural beauty of the James Street Railway Station is exquisite. Khan, an architect and heritage enthusiast himself, says one of the highlights is the high rise staircase with ornate stucco finish railing and ‘jali’ on both sides that leads to the platform.

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“There is a beautiful free standing canopy of about 100 feet in length with square supporting pillars and marvellous engineering with network of rafters, lattice and brackets that support the roof while the parapet of roof has a very ornamented design,” he points out.

Interestingly, while these parts are maintained well by the SCR, there are some parts that have fallen to the vagaries of time. These include the original train ticket booking counter, which has a quarter circle roof with three booking windows placed in the curvature. Unfortunately, dirt and debris have been dumped covering half of the window.

“I request the State government and Railways to protect the original staircase, ticket booking enclosure and the platform canopy,” Khan says.

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