The next time you lean against a wall in Royapuram, remember: it’s quite possible it is a historic one. This is the kind of place Royapuram is, as we found out during a recent heritage walk. In this northern sprawl bubbling with centuries-old remembrances, the Railway Printing Press holds its ground. Mention it on Ebrahim Sahib Street and you will get accurate directions, though it has no special markings. With its high wooden beams, dusty ventilators, vast working areas and water/oil channels underfoot, the Railway Press is the kind of place film makers would love to shoot their fight scenes in.
The vast interiors of the press, with its gigantic machines, is a marvel. Machines here produce the kind of cardboard tickets passengers bought when the first train chugged out of our station. The earliest mention of railway press dates back to 1926, when staff from the press were deputed to work in the Madras Trade School when it started a separate printing section.
The press has been printing not just regular and card-tickets for use in small halt stations, but books and forms including reservation forms and time-tables. What has changed is the technology — the original Edmondson machines have given way to lithography. The monogram is first printed on large cardboards, followed by letters and numbers. The cardboard sheets of 500 GSM thickness are then cut by machines, and placed in compacting trays.
The wooden compacting trays are a hundred years old; tickets are tied with jute ropes. They are tied in bundles of 250 each and packed in boxes of 10,000 for despatch. The press uses a German board-cutting machine dated 1927, though old-timers say that the press has been functioning since 1891. When stations receive the tickets, they arrange them in ticket tubes as per numbers, and tickets are pulled out of the slot one-by-one from the bottom, date-stamped and issued.
Last year, this segment of the British era ran into trouble. “In October 2017, the Railway Board put forth a proposal to ease out the century-old Royapuram Press,” says chronicler Nivedita Louis. Employees resisted and it was rolled back in February 2018. The Railways said that printing tickets would continue in the presses at Byculla, Howrah, Shakurbasti, Secunderabad, apart from Royapuram.
“The Royapuram press is one of the five existing railway printing presses in the country now,” she adds. “The Southern Railway press in Trichy downed its shutters this July.” It continues to work using state-of-the-art machinery from Italy. “It will be sad day if the press yields its historic space to mobile and e-tickets.”