1.
New Delhi
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New Delhi is the capital of India and one of Delhi citys 11 districts. The National Capital Region is a larger entity comprising the entire National Capital Territory along with adjoining districts. The foundation stone of the city was laid by George V and it was designed by British architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Herbert Baker. The new capital was inaugurated on 13 February 1931, by Viceroy, New Delhi has been selected as one of the hundred Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under Prime Minister of India Narendra Modis flagship Smart Cities Mission. Calcutta was the capital of India during the British Raj until December 1911, Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of ancient India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857. During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi. The Government of British India felt that it would be easier to administer India from Delhi in the centre of northern India. The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894. The foundation stone of New Delhi was laid by King George V and Queen Mary at the site of Delhi Durbar of 1911 at Kingsway Camp on 15 December 1911, during their imperial visit. Large parts of New Delhi were planned by Edwin Lutyens, who first visited Delhi in 1912, the contract was given to Sobha Singh. The original plan called for its construction in Tughlaqabad, inside the Tughlaqabad fort, construction really began after World War I and was completed by 1931. The city that was later dubbed Lutyens Delhi was inaugurated in ceremonies beginning on 10 February 1931 by Lord Irwin, Lutyens designed the central administrative area of the city as a testament to Britains imperial aspirations. Soon Lutyens started considering other places, however, it was rejected by the Viceroy when the cost of acquiring the necessary properties was found to be too high. The central axis of New Delhi, which faces east at India Gate, was previously meant to be a north-south axis linking the Viceroys House at one end with Paharganj at the other. During the projects early years, many believed it was a gate from Earth to Heaven itself. Eventually, owing to space constraints and the presence of a number of heritage sites in the North side. A site atop the Raisina Hill, formerly Raisina Village, a Meo village, was chosen for the Rashtrapati Bhawan, then known as the Viceroys House. The reason for this choice was that the hill lay directly opposite the Dinapanah citadel, which was considered the site of Indraprastha
2.
V. V. Giri
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Varahagiri Venkata Giri pronunciation, commonly known as V. V. Giri, was the fourth President of the Republic of India from 24 August 1969 to 24 August 1974. As President, Giri subordinated the office of the President to the Prime Minister, Giri was succeeded by Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed as President in 1974. After the end of his term, Giri was honoured with the Bharat Ratna, Giri was born in Berhampur in the Ganjam district of Odisha, into a Telugu Brahmin family. His father, V. V. Jogayya Pantulu, was a successful lawyer, Giri was married to Saraswati Bai and the couple had 14 children. Giri completed his education at the Khallikote College in Berhampur. In 1913 he went to Ireland to study law which he did at University College Dublin, Giri was one among the first crop of thirteen Indian students who sat the obligatory year long course at UCD in 1914-15. This was a requirement for being called to the Irish Bar through study at the Kings Inns, in total,50 Indian students studied at UCD between 1914 and 1917. Giri and a law student also enrolled to study on the full bachelor of arts course in UCD. Giri studied English, where he was lectured by Thomas MacDonagh and his lecturer in political economy was the reformer and co-operativist Thomas A. Finlay SJ. During the First World War, Giri travelled from Dublin to London, Gandhi wanted for Giri to join the Imperial war effort as a Red Cross Volunteer. Giri initially acceded to Gandhis request but later regretted his decision. According to one of Giris biographers, Gandhiji with his characteristic magnanimity relieved Giri of the obligation to join the Red Cross, along with fellow Indian students he produced a pamphlet documenting the abuse of Indians in South Africa. The pamphlet was intercepted by Indian Political Intelligence and resulted in increased police scrutiny of Giri, meanwhile, anonymous articles were written by Indian students for the newspaper of the Irish Volunteers and in The National Student, a UCD student magazine. He was suspected of association with prominent ring leaders in the 1916 Rising including James Connolly, PH Pearse, Giri was called to the Irish Bar on 21 June 1916 but he did not complete his studies for BA in UCD. Indian students were subjected to police following the 1916 Rising. Upon returning to India in 1916 Giri enrolled at the Madras High Court and he also became a member of the Congress party, attended its Lucknow session and joined the Home Rule Movement of Annie Beasant. Giri abandoned a legal career in response to Mahatma Gandhis call for a Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. In 1922, he was arrested for the first time for demonstrating against the sale of liquor shops, Giri was closely associated with the labour and trade union movement in India throughout his career
3.
Patiala State Monorail Trainways
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Patiala State Monorail Trainways was a unique rail-guided, partially road-borne railways system running in Patiala from 1907 to 1927. PSMT was the second system in India, after the Kundala Valley Railway. The Kundala Valley Railway pre-dated this, also using the Ewing system between 1902 and 1908, although only used bullocks for haulage. Following the conversion of the Kundala Valley Railway from a monorail to a gauge railway in 1908. These were the instances of a monorail train system in India. A locomotive and a coach of PSMT have been restored, are in running condition and are exhibited in the Indian National Rail Museum, maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh of Patiala got this unique railway system constructed to facilitate movement of people and goods in his state. The chief engineer of this project was Colonel C. W. Bowles, maharaja Sir Bhupinder Singh made him chief Engineer for the PSMT project. One of the objects of PSMT was to use of the 560 mules being maintained by Patiala State. Apart from mules, bullocks were also used to haul the monorail before introduction of locomotives on the route of PSMT. The only published information about PSMT was in a 1908 edition of Imperial Gazetteer of India in which there was a brief mention, the gazetteer simply stated that a mono-rail tramway, opened in February,1907, connects Basi with the railway at Sirhind. An ordnance map of 1913 also shows a tramway running along west side of road, apart from the above, PSMT has not been mentioned in any official documents of that period in India. The railways based on the Ewing System are basically monorails using a wheel for balancing the train. The main load is borne by the rail while the rest is borne by the balancing wheel which runs on the ground. Further, in train systems, the rails have to be at almost exact level of other rail. By using Ewing system, this problem is solved as the wheel does not need exact level to maintain the balance of monorail. In addition the cost of laying tracks also goes down considerably since only one rail is used, another benefit of using Ewing System was that the balancing wheel could run on existing tarred roads as well as the macadam roads thus further reducing cost to lay down tracks. Using one rail also means that the circle is far less than the standard trains. PSMT had to pass through very congested areas
4.
Ewing System
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The Ewing System is a balancing monorail system developed in the late 19th century by British inventor W. J. Ewing. It is not to be confused with the later system patented by Robert W. Ewing. In the Ewing System the main wheels of the run on a single steel rail. The system had been proposed in 1868 by William Thorold, an engineer from Norwich. The major benefit of trains is that they run on steel tracks, steel rail can carry more load with less rolling friction than any other mode of ground transport. However there are several disadvantages of laying railway tracks consisting of two rails, Both rails have to rise and fall and bank together. Laying two rails requires a lot of space and maintenance, the turning radius of the train is restricted by the difference in length or distance traveled between the inside and outside rails due to curve resistance. Curve resistance means that the wheels on the rail travel a shorter distance than the wheels on the outside rail to get the vehicle around a curve. The trains can turn to the limit where its outer wheels can cope with the additional required speed. If the outer wheels fail to maintain or reach the required speed, W. J. Ewing implemented a monorail system, with only one rail and double flanged rail wheels, that had been proposed by William Thorold in a lecture to the British Association in 1868. This system avoided all those problems, since it was laid out along the side of a road, further, the road or balance wheels main purpose was to balance the train and to keep it upright. The balancing wheel on the road carried only 4% or 5% of the load, as the track was on side of the road, it was no obstacle to vehicles crossing it. Further, since it was a monorail with a wheel on the ground. The Ewing system was used in Patiala State Monorail Trainways, the Patiala monorail is preserved in National Rail Museum at New Delhi. It is still in running condition and it was also used on Kundala Valley Railway from 1902 to 1908
5.
Orenstein & Koppel
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Orenstein & Koppel was a major German engineering company specialising in railway vehicles, escalators, and heavy equipment. It was founded on April 1,1876 in Berlin by Benno Orenstein, originally a general engineering company, O&K soon started to specialise in the manufacture of railway vehicles. The company also manufactured heavy equipment and escalators, O&K pulled out of the railway business in 1981. The construction-equipment business was sold to New Holland Construction, at the part of the Fiat Group. The Orenstein & Koppel Company was a firm that first entered the railway-construction field, building locomotives. O&K supplied all manner of equipment to the Army. Because of strained capacity at the Schlachtensee shops, work transferred in 1899 to a site in Nowawes, later Babelsberg, around 1908, O&K acquired the firm of Gerlach and König in Nordhausen, building petrol and diesel locomotives there under the trade mark Montania. O&K expanded to freight and passenger cars, and above all. The company also built other heavy equipment, including graders, dump trucks, forklift trucks, compressors, crawler loaders, wheeled loaders, road rollers, the company also began manufacturing escalators, transmissions, rapid-transit railway lines, buses, tractors, and cargo ships. Passenger liners, shipboard cranes, and shipbuilding enterprises rounded out the companys profile, because of the companys thriving export business, a worldwide system of branch offices was created. In the early years of the 20th century, O&K built bucket chain trenchers, at first from wood and these were propelled by steam or oil engines. O&K also made railway trenchers for work in heavy soils, in the First World War, O&K built railway engines and cars of all sizes for the German government. The treaty also removed access to markets, at the end of 1925. By 1935, business had recovered and the company produced 5,299 locomotives, besides the Feldbahn contacts, the company produced Series 50 steam locomotives and standard rail gauge vehicles in the 1930s. The company produced locomotives, and Series 44 and Series 50 steam engines, for the national railway company. In 1922, they manufactured their first continuous-track steam shovel, in 1926, diesel engines replaced steam engines, the company converted earlier steam units to diesel power as the need arose. O&K merged with a builder, selling the engines under the O&K banner. At the Spandau factory, O&K built cable-operated excavators and bucket-wheel excavators for use in the coal mines of eastern Germany
6.
Salford, Greater Manchester
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Salford is a town lying at the heart of the City of Salford, a city and metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, in North West England. Salford is sited in a meander of the River Irwell, which forms in part its boundary with the city of Manchester to the east, the Salford wards of Broughton and Kersal are on the other side of the river. Together with its towns to the west, Salford forms the local government district of the City of Salford. The wider City of Salford district has a population of 219,200, historically in Lancashire, Salfords early history is marked by its status as a Royal caput and the judicial seat of the ancient hundred of Salfordshire, to which it lent its name. It was granted a charter by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, in about 1230, Salford became a major factory town and inland port during the 18th and 19th centuries. Cotton and silk spinning and weaving in local mills attracted an influx of families, Salford Docks was a principal dockyard of the Manchester Ship Canal. By the end of the 19th century Salford had a working class community. Industrial activities declined during the 20th century however, causing an economic depression. Salford subsequently became one of contrasts, with regenerated inner-city areas like Salford Quays next to some of the most socially deprived, Salfords MediaCityUK became the headquarters of CBBC and BBC Sport in 2011. The name of Salford derives from the Old English word Sealhford and it referred to the willows or sallows that grew alongside the banks of the River Irwell. The ford was about where Victoria Bridge is today, willow trees are still found in Lower Broughton. Salford appears in the roll of 1169 as Sauford and in the Lancashire Inquisitions of 1226 as Sainford. The raw material for tools was scarce and unsuitable for working. The Brigantes were the major Celtic tribe in what is now Northern England, following the Roman conquest of Britain, General Agricola ordered the construction of a Roman fort named Mamucium to protect the routes to Deva Victrix and Eboracum from the Brigantes. The fort was completed in AD79, and for over 300 years the Pax Romana brought peace to the area. Both the main Roman road to the north, from Mamucium to Ribchester, and a road to the west, ran through what is now Salford. The withdrawal of the Romans in AD410 left the inhabitants at the mercy of the Saxons, the Danes later conquered the area and absorbed what was left of the Brigantes. Angles settled in the region during the Early Middle Ages and gave the locality the name Sealhford, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Sealhford was part of the Kingdom of Northumbria until it was conquered in 923 by Edward the Elder
