The making of CST, which began life as Victoria Terminus, took 10 years.
Now, the restoration job has taken 10 years to start since it was first
mooted in 1997
For the last month, the pitched and flat roofs atop Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus have been host to almost 50 workers in bright yellow hard hats,
busy fixing the terrace in dire need of repair. Two years after CST was
granted World Heritage Site status by Unesco, restoration work on the
neo-Gothic building began in December 2006.
The project has been hobbled by bureaucracy and a lack of funds. Currently under way is part one of the first phase (itself divided into four parts and costing Rs 2.7 crore). It
includes the muchneeded waterproofing of terraces, replacing the old broken
Mangalore tiles with new ones and fixing the plumbing. The most iconic
example of Tropical Gothic, the Victoria Terminus – as it was known until a
decade ago – was designed and built by architect F W Stevens, who personally
supervised the building.
Many of these figures were carved by Lockwood Kipling and his students from the Sir JJ School of Art across the road. It took 10 years to construct VT, from 1878 to 1888. Even then, a decade was considered an extravagant lease, only condoned by the sheer magnitude and importance of the project, whose total costs came to 260,000 pounds. It’s
another matter that it has taken the same time, 10 years, for the
restoration project, first mooted in 1997, to get on track.
SPIDERMEN ALL: Almost 50 workers, in their bright yellow hard hats, are now
working on restoring CST. The station is in dire need of sustenance, given
the wear and tear the building is subjected to every day with millions of
commuters pounding through it. Leakage during the monsoon is an old
complaint. For years now, tarpaulin sheets have been used to get through the
rainy months