Bhor Ghat

Bhor Ghat is a mountain pass located between Palasdari and Khandala for railway and between Khopoli and Khandala on the road route in Maharashtra, India, on the crest of the Western Ghats.

History

In February 1781, Bhorghat was the site of a battle between the Maratha Empire centered in Poona and the foreign powers in Bombay. They dispatched a large force to capture Pune, which had to pass through the Bhorghat pass, where they were intercepted by Maratha forces. In the battle that ensued, the Marathas inflicted a crushing defeat on the British in what would be known as the Battle of Bhorghat.

The discovery of a route to make a motorable pass in Bhor Ghat came after information was provided by a local Dhangar tribesman called Shigroba. Later, the Great Indian Peninsula Railway laid a railway line from Mumbai to Pune. The section through Bhor Ghat with 28 tunnels, and old bridges was opened in 1863. The Ghat opened Mumbai to the Deccan plains of Peninsular India.

Building a railway over the Bhor ghat was an exercise in imperial engineering, as noted in an article in Engineering Magazine in 1899, where it was described as "a more certain and enduring form of attack than military power, and that the railway, the canal and harbour are the real weapons in the conquest of a colony." ^p. 347

The number of staff during construction increased from 10,000 in 1856, over 20,000 in 1857 to a peak of 42,000 in January 1861. The original incline included building 25 tunnels, eight arched masonry viaducts, blasting and removing of 54 mio cubic feet (1.5 mio m³) of hard rock and building embankments from 67.5 mio cubic feet (1.9 million m³) of material at a total cost of £ 1,100,000, i.e. £70,000 per mile. ^p. 352