Did you ever travel in a train from Peshawar to Landikotal?If not, you have certainly missed a big thrill in your life. The railway track between Jamrud and Landikotal is a marvel of engineering feat of the Brits!To extend a railway track in the rugged mountains, 3500 feet above sea level, construct dozens of railway tunnels and small and big bridges over the 26 miles patch between Jamrud and Landikotal and that too about more than one hundred years back was certainly no mean achievement! The same goes for the railway track laid by the Britishers between Rawalpindi and Manzai, which is located at the gateway to South Waziristan, through Kohat, Bannu, Lakki and Tank. Would it not have been better if instead of showpieces like Orange train we had reconstructed this forgotten railway track and extended it to D. I. Khan also?That would have benefitted the entire lot of people living between Peshawar and DIK?Pakistan is not only Lahore and Islamabad. It consists of hundred of other cities too deserving equal attention. We had inherited a very good and efficient railway system in 1947 when Britishers left this sub-continent. What a pity that instead of building and improving on the existing infra-structure of the railways, we destroyed it through the ineptitude of the successive governments, both past and present.
Railway is the transport of the common man, the have-nots. It is cheaper and more comfortable for the old, for the ill, for the children and for the fair sex to travel in. There is no denying the fact that a well established and extensive railway track is not only conducive to the army for transportation of its manpower as well as arms and ammunition to the war fronts in times of emergency, it costs little to the traders also to transport their goods from one city to the other which, ultimately, is beneficial to the consumers of various goods and essential commodities.
Nobody grudges projects like metro buses or orange trains. They are also necessary but before launching such costly ventures which benefit the inhabitants of the city only in which they are executed, it was essential that the government should have cared for saving the tottering infra-structure of the existing railway which benefits the people living in the entire country. Oldies like us also remember the Trams which once provided cheaper transport service to the dwellers of Karachi city. Instead of improving on it and extending its track, it was done away with. Whose loss was it?Only of the poor, for whom it provided a cheaper mode of transport! Can’t it be revived?
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