Page 88 - Understanding NCERT Histroy 09th

1.2 Sleepers on Tracks
l Disappearance of oak forests in India created a problem of timber supply for Royal
Navy.
l Indian forests supplied vast quantities of timber for Royal Navy.
Goyal Brothers Prakashan
l Spread of railways from 1850s in India needed huge amount of timber as fuel for
locomotives and sleepers for tracks. Each mile of railway track needed between 1760–2000
sleepers.
l By 1890 about 25,500 km of tracks had been laid – in 1946, the lengths of the tracks
increased to over 765,000 km. Huge amount of forests were destroyed to lay railway
tracks. The contractors began cutting forests indiscriminately.

Source B (Page no. 81)
‘The new line to be constructed was the Indus Valley Railway between Multan and Sukkur, a
distance of nearly 300 miles. At the rate of 2000 sleepers per mile this would require 600,000
sleepers 10 feet by 10 inches by 5 inches (or 3.5 cubic feet apiece), being upwards of 2,000,000
cubic feet. The locomotives would use wood fuel. At the rate of one train daily either way
and at one maund per train-mile an annual supply of 219,000 maunds would be demanded. In
addition a large supply of fuel for brick-burning would be required. The sleepers would have
to come mainly from the Sind Forests. The fuel from the tamarisk and Jhand forests of Sind
and the Punjab. The other new line was the Northern State Railway from Lahore to Multan. It
was estimated that 2,200,000 sleepers would be required for its construction.’
E.P. Stebbing, The Forests of India, Vol. II (1923).

Activity (Page no. 81)

Q. Each mile of railway track required between 1,760 and 2,000 sleepers. If one average
sized tree yields 3 to 5 sleepers for a 3 metre wide broad gauge track, calculate
approximately how many trees would have to be cut to lay one mile of track.
Ans. Calculation
1 mile = 1609 m
 3 m wide track needs 5 sleepers
5
∴ 1 m wide track needs = 3 sleepers
5
∴ 1609 m wide track needs = 3 × 160536 = 2680 sleepers

 5 sleepers is yielded by I tree

∴ 1 sleeper is _________ 1 tree
5
∴ 2680 sleepers is yielded by 1 × 2680 = 536 = 536 trees would have to be cut to lay
one mile of track. 5

1.3 Plantations
l The Colonial government gave vast areas to European planters at cheap rates to make
way for tea, coffee and rubber plantations.

History Class IX H-79