Unbelievable ? Believe it !
When the first steam train was built in 1804, people were worried that the speed would make rail passengers unable to breathe or that they would be shaken unconscious by the vibrations. On June 14, 1841, the Queen and Prince made their first journey in it, on the line from Slough, near Windsor, to Paddington Station in London. Victoria announced herself "quite charmed," but Albert worried that the locomotive's speed was dangerously excessive -- an amazing fifty miles an hour. Incredible as it may...
more... sound, Mahatma Gandhi was not a big fan of the railways. He considered it to be a destructive influence on India. According to Gandhi, railways was used by the British to consolidate their grip on the country. In a book of essays titled Third Class in Indian Railways, Gandhi recounts one such journey, on a Bombay-to-Madras train, where Rs 13 and 9 annas got you a ticket in a third- class compartment meant for 22 passengers, but which very often swelled to 35 passengers.