File:'A Railway Train', lithographed sketch by Hurnam Singh, circa mid-19th century.jpg

English: 'A Railway Train', lithographed sketch by Hurnam Singh, circa mid-19th century. Private collection.

Alternative description: Rail Gaddi. Drawing by 'Janaab Noor'. Lithograph, early 20th century.

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Detailed description (taken from: [1]):

"I was not exactly looking for it — it just turned up in the sheaf of images I keep ferreting away somewhere in my folders — but it did two things, this sketch. It brought a quick smile to my lips, and, at the same time, introduced me to a Punjabi ‘artist’ whose name seems to have got lost in the whorls of time. It was a sketch, recording/celebrating? virtually the first coming of railways to our part of the world, somewhere in the early sixties of the 19th century, and the painter/draugtsman [sic] seems to have drawn it — on a sheet picked up from a discarded sarkari register perhaps — at the asking of a lithographic press, the Chashma-e Noor, at Amritsar. In the lower part of the sketch is a complete scene: at the extreme left three persons, one of them a Muslim, at the ticket window, with a large clock on the wall dutifully recording the time as 12.50; the train having just steamed away, two and a half carriages are seen, one of them occupied completely by women — a zenana dibba, to be sure — but all desis, with the words, in English letters, ‘THRD CLASS’ — the artist evidently not being on good terms with vowels — and, in Urdu letters, ‘darjasoyam’, meaning ‘Third Class’, emblazoned outside. In another carriage are seen hatted gentlemen — British or Anglicised — the three sporting superior airs. Right in front of course is the engine, the driver, a hatted figure, busy at work, obviously employed by Northern Railways, for the words ‘NR’ are painted on the door of his cubicle. However, the ‘artist’ does not forget to claim credit, and adds — clearly establishing his knowledge of English — the words ‘HURNAM SINGH’: his own name. Sadly, we — at least I — am not aware of any other work by this artist. But it would have been nice, considering the delightful vignette that he boldly brings in at the top of the sketch: a rag-tag party of four musicians and three soldiers following their leader, an English ‘sahib’ on horseback with a whip, which looks more like a morchhal than a whip, hurrying, having perhaps just performed with elan the ceremonial task of celebrating the arrival of railways."