The first railway in Punjab opened in 1862 between Amritsar and Lahore, thirty-two miles. The North Western Railway grew out of it to become the largest system in the region, running from Delhi to the Khyber and into Sindh.
It was built for strategic reasons as much as commercial: moving troops to the frontier. It also moved the canal colonies' grain to the ports and made the colony economy possible.
The Kalka to Shimla line, opened 1903, two feet six inches gauge, 96 kilometres, some 864 bridges and 103 tunnels, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Kangra Valley line from Pathankot followed in 1929.
In 1947 the system was divided and the trains carried refugees in both directions, and a number were stopped and their passengers killed.
The Amritsar to Lahore line, the first railway in Punjab, carried the Samjhauta Express until 2019 and now carries nothing across the border.
The Kapurthala Rail Coach Factory now builds the coaches for the whole Indian system, which is a return of sorts.
The North Western Railway's workshops and headquarters were at Moghalpura in Lahore, so the whole engineering and administrative apparatus of the system went to Pakistan in 1947 and the Indian side had to build its own from nothing. The Kapurthala works and the Patiala locomotive plant are downstream of that.
1947 cut every line running west. Stations that had been junctions became termini and lines that had run to Lahore, Kasur and Bahawalnagar stopped at the border.
The station buildings are the largest body of colonial architecture in Punjab still in daily use and no list of them exists. Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ambala and the small ones at Doraha, Phillaur and Beas are unprotected, which means each is altered whenever the division has money to alter it.