The newly renovated railway station at Udvada will help draw more community members to the Udvada Utsav in December 2019 and, more importantly, it will be a boon for regular visitors to Iranshah, noted Udvada High Priest and member of the National Commission for Minorities Dastur Khurshed Dastoor, in conversation with Parsiana on August 26, 2019. "The height of the platforms has been increased, and also the length,” he said. The newly furbished air-conditioned waiting room and toilets on platform one will be very useful for the elderly, he stated. Dastoor was appreciative of the efforts of former railway minister Suresh Prabhu and current minister Piyush Goyal. The station "now looks better than Vapi station,” he stated. Vapi station is approximately 12 km south of Udvada. Many travellers have in the past preferred to alight or board trains from there as some fast trains stop at Vapi.
Clockwise from top: the renovated Udvada station;
inset: bust of Behramji Seervai at R. F. Daboo Hospital, Navsari
Photo: Parsi Statues by Marzban Giara;
archway outside station; children singing at the inauguration
of the station, invitees with Dastur Khurshed Dastoor seated
4th from l
Photos: Shahin Mehershahi
Audience at the inauguration of Udvada station
Western Railway’s (WR) chief spokesperson Ravinder Bhakar told mid-day (MD) on August 24 that the station has been upgraded to a "pilgrimage destination station” at a cost of Rs 3.2 crores. The project was monitored by architect Prashant Chokhawala from Valsad, he said. "Platform number one has been extended to accommodate 24-coach trains for easy entraining and detraining.” Other facilities include a new reservation-cum-booking office, toilet blocks for differently-abled persons, decorative murals on one wall of the concourse hall and "cornice flowers” on the ceiling, said Bhakar. Dastoor shared with Parsiana that he has now taken up the community’s long-pending request with Goyal for the Flying Ranee train between Bombay and Surat to stop at Udvada station.
On the September 6 inaugural of the renovated station, Dastoor "requested citizens to take care of the upgradation and consider it as their own by keeping the surroundings clean,” wrote Shahin Mehershahi who manages the N. M. Wadia Dharamshala near the station, in an email to community members. The High Priest requested those assembled to join the Swachh Bharat (Keep India clean) mission of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Community members were joined by members of the Lions Club, Senior Citizens Club, and civic officials. The program started with an invocation to Goddess Saraswati by students of the Bhagini Samaj School and ended with the national anthem, Mehershahi wrote. The air-conditioned waiting room were inaugurated by Dastoor. A previous function to throw open the station held on August 21, attended by local politicians, reportedly did not have any Parsi invitees.
The genesis of Udvada station was a letter that contractor and carting agent Behramji Seervai (c 1824-1914) wrote to J. K. Duxbury, the railway company’s agent in October 1868, stressing the need for a small station at Udvada and making an offer to pay the expenses for constructing it, stated researcher Marzban Giara, based on information gleaned from Parsi Prakash Volume II. The company agent C. Curry replied to Seervai in June 1869 that a station would indeed be constructed if Seervai or his friends could improve the road from the station to Udvada village. A temporary station was inaugurated for Udvada in December 1869. Before this, pilgrims had to alight at Pardi and then travel the eight miles to the village by other means.
Seervai’s offer of October 1869 to T. C. Hope, the collector of Surat to pay half the expenses of repairing the road was accepted in January 1870. The collector’s letter stated that "the Local Fund Committee will undertake hereafter to improve it as far as the means at their disposal will allow.” Seervai deposited Rs 2,000 in Surat’s treasury office for the road in April 1870, and the road to the village was built in May 1870.
Giara wrote that philanthropist Motlibai Wadia contributed Rs 68,000 (including Rs 30,000 for its repairs) for the road from the station to the Atash Behram. "The railway company demolished the 25-year-old temporary station and built a permanent station three-fourth mile away and inaugurated it on January 1, 1896,” noted the researcher.