A railway capital of the south
Long before Chennai Central was built, the railway story of southern Tamil Nadu was centred on Trichy. The Great Southern of India Railway, founded in 1853, made Tiruchirappalli its headquarters, and in 1859 it opened its first line, from Trichy to the port of Nagapattinam on the Bay of Bengal. That makes Tiruchirappalli railway station, officially Tiruchirappalli Junction (code TPJ), one of the oldest railway centres in South India. The company later merged into the South Indian Railway, which for a time also ran its network from Trichy.
Golden Rock
Trichy's railway heritage lives on at Golden Rock (Ponmalai), on the city's outskirts, where a large railway workshop moved from Nagapattinam in the 1920s. It still maintains locomotives and rolling stock for Southern Railway.
Five lines from TPJ
- The Chord Line north towards Villupuram and Chennai
- Trichy–Thanjavur–Kumbakonam main line, through the Cauvery delta
- Erode–Karur–Trichy line, west to the Kongu region
- Trichy–Madurai line, south via Dindigul
- Trichy–Manamadurai line, south-east
Gold for green
In March 2020 TPJ received a Gold certification (72 points) from the Confederation of Indian Industry for green building practices. It was the first and only station in Southern Railway, and the fifth across Indian Railways, to earn it.
The station in numbers
TPJ has 9 side platforms on 17 tracks, about 95 metres above sea level. It is the headquarters of Southern Railway's Tiruchirappalli division and is graded NSG-2. In August 2019 it handled about 52,715 passengers a day.
On screen
Trichy's station platforms have appeared in Tamil films, including Vaaranam Aayiram (2008), Siva Manasula Sakthi and Kalaga Thalaivan.
Temples and the rock
- The Rock Fort temple, perched on an 83-metre outcrop, gave its name to the Rockfort Express to Chennai.
- Srirangam, one of the largest functioning Hindu temple complexes in the world, is on an island in the Cauvery just north of the city.
- Thanjavur's Brihadeeswarar Temple is about an hour away on the main line; see services on Railopedia's schedule page.