Boat mail
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The boat mail was a train and steamer ferry service between India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).
In the late 19th century, the railway route in India was from Madras (Chennai) to Tuticorin. At Tuticorin, passengers embarked on the boat mail steamer to Colombo in Ceylon. The train took 21 hours and 50 minutes for the journey from Madras to Tuticorin. The boat mail was one of the early trains to be given vestibuled carriages, in 1898.
After the Pamban bridge was built, the train's route changed and it went from Madras to Dhanushkodi. A much shorter ferry service then took the passengers to Talaimannar in Ceylon, from where another train went to Colombo. In 1964 the boat mail was washed into the sea by huge waves during a cyclone, and the tracks to Dhanushkodi were also destroyed.
At one time the South Indian Railway considered constructing a bridge 12 miles (19 km) long across the shallow waters and sand shoals and reefs known as Adam's Bridge between India and Sri Lanka. However, this plan was shelved when World War I broke out.
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