12654 Tiruchy - Chennai Rockfort Express Early Morning Arrival at Chennai Egmore

Dedicated to 112 years of Chennai Egmore.

Train : 12654 Tiruchy - Chennai Rockfort Superfast Express

Chennai Egmore (formerly known as Madras Egmore) (station code: MS) is a railway station in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Situated in the neighborhood of Egmore, it is one of the four intercity railway terminals in the city and the other three railway stations are Chennai Central Railway Station, Tambaram railway station and Chennai Beach railway station. The station was built in 1906–1908 as the terminus of the South Indian Railway Company. The building built in Gothic style is one of the prominent landmarks of Chennai. The main entrance to the station is situated on Gandhi-Irwin Road and the rear entrance on Poonamallee High Road.

The station was apparently constructed from 8679 on land purchased from Pulney Andy. The building is built in the Gothic style of architecture with imposing domes and corridors. It is one of the prominent landmarks of the city of Chennai. The recently opened northern entrance to this railway station is on the arterial Poonamallee High Road in Chennai city.

History says that the station was actually a fort, called the Egmore Redoubt, similar to Leith Castle, which is a part of Santhome. It is said that the station came up in a place that once used to store ammunition for the British.

The station building was constructed on a 2.5 acres (1.0 ha) land, for which 1.8 acres (0.73 ha) was acquired from S. Pulney Andy, an English physician, who, in his letter to the 'Collector of Madras,' initially refused to sell his property owing to the difficulty with which he had purchased and developed the property. However, the South Indian Railway (SIR) Company, which was then operating train services to the south, persuaded him to sell the land, for which Andy claimed ₹1 lakh (US$1,400) as compensation. After acquiring the land, the SIR invited Henry Irwin, CIE (chief engineer), who did much of latter day Indo-Saracenic in Madras, and E. C. Bird, company architect, to design a building to suit the traffic need. After several alterations in the plan, the construction work began in September 1905 and was completed in 1908. It was constructed by contractor T. Samynada Pillai of thirunageswaram near kumbakonam at a cost of ₹17 lakh (US$24,000). The station was officially opened on 11 June 1908.

There was initially a demand that the station be named after Robert Clive, which was, however, strongly opposed by the public as they wanted to name it Egmore. When the station was opened there was no electricity connection and a generator was used.[3] The station became the major meter-gauge terminal for Chennai after the formation of Southern Railway in 1951 and served as the gateway to the southern Tamil Nadu, chiefly due to its acting as a connecting point for passengers from the south to the Chennai Central for boarding north-, west- and east-bound trains. Irwin and Bird worked on the design of the building, which was sympathetically added to in the 1930s and 1980s.[4] In the 1990s it was converted into a major broad gauge terminal, a role in which it became operational in 1998.[6]

Earlier cars used to come inside the platform itself, which was found only in this station.[7] In its report, the SIR commented on the construction of a new building for Egmore