Chilahati
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Bangladesh Railway Station | |
Location |
Nilphamari, Rangpur Bangladesh |
Coordinates | 26°14′38″N 88°47′48″E / 26.2439°N 88.7967°E |
Elevation | 48 m (157 ft) |
Line(s) | Chilahati-Parbatipur-Santahar-Darshana Line |
Construction | |
Structure type | Standard (on ground station) |
Other information | |
Status | Functioning |
History | |
Opened | 1876 |
Previous names | Eastern Bengal Railway |
New Jalpaiguri–Haldibari–Parbatipur line | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Source: Google maps, Indian Railway – East Zone Time Table |
Source: Google maps, Indian Railway – East Zone Time Table
Chilahati (Bengali: চিলাহাটি) is a border railway station in Bangladesh, situated in Nilphamari District, in Rangpur Division. It is a defunct railway transit point on the Bangladesh-India border.
During the British period all connections from southern parts of Bengal to North Bengal were through the eastern part of Bengal. From 1878, the railway route from Kolkata, then called Calcutta, was in two laps. The first lap was a 185 km journey along the Eastern Bengal State Railway from Calcutta Station (later renamed Sealdah) to Damookdeah Ghat on the southern bank of the Padma River, then across the river in a ferry and the second lap of the journey. A 336 km metre gauge line of the North Bengal Railway linked Saraghat on the northern bank of the Padma to Siliguri.
The 1.8 km long Hardinge Bridge across the Padma came up in 1912. In 1926 the metre-gauge section north of the bridge was converted to broad gauge, and so the entire Calcutta - Siliguri route became broad-gauge. The route thus ran: Sealdah-Ranaghat-Bheramara-Hardinge Bridge-Iswardi-Santahar-Hili-Parabtipur-Nilphamari-Haldibari-Jalpaiguri-Siliguri.
With the partition of India, this track got trisected. The through route was formally closed after the India-Pakistan War in 1965.