Video Credit The Bharat Archives
today we will tell you about the 'Frontier Mail' train of undivided India. Frontier Mail was the brainchild of the erstwhile train service Bombay Baroda and Central India Railway, and started it as an answer to its arch-rival Great Indian Peninsula Railway for its train Punjab Mail.
This train ran for the first time on September 1, 1928, almost 16 years after the Punjab Mail started running. When it was first introduced, this train ran from Ballard Pier Mall station in Mumbai to Peshawar. When Ballard Pier station was closed, its originating station was shifted to Colaba, Mumbai. And today Peshawar is located in the western region of Pakistan. The Ballard Pier Mole station was also the loading station for mail arriving by P&O steamer from Europe. It is interesting to note that when the train left Ballard Pier Mole station, it first traveled on the Bombay Port Trust Railway and then on the tracks of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway and then on the tracks of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway. But used to come. Air conditioners were installed in this train in the year 1934 and it became India's first air-conditioned bogie train.
While the Punjab Mail used to take several days to travel from Mumbai to Peshawar, the Frontier Mail reached Peshawar from Bombay in just 72 hours. The Frontier Mail was started to carry passengers and mail from Mumbai to Delhi and then to Peshawar in association with the North Western Railway, passing through Punjab, Lahore and Rawalpindi which was the last railway station for those going to Kashmir. Used to stay there too. This train covered a distance of about 1393 kms between Mumbai and Delhi while the distance between Mumbai to Peshawar was 2335 kms. This train remained the fastest train in India for a long time.
During the autumn months between September and December, the train departed from Ballard Pier Mole Station so that the British coming to India by steamer could easily travel by this train.
In 1930 The Times of London described it as one of the most famous express trains to run in the British Empire.
In its early days, the Frontier Mail connected Bombay with Peshawar, located in the North-West Frontier Province of undivided India, hence the name Frontier. This train is mentioned in the Hindi film Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero: Netaji is said to have gone to Peshawar by Frontier Mail in 1944 and from there to Kabul in Afghanistan. After the partition of India, the Frontier Mail started running between Mumbai and Amritsar, the last city in India on this railway line. In 1996 it was renamed the Golden Temple Mail 'Golden Temple Express' after the holiest site of the Sikhs, the Golden Temple.