SOCIAL ISSUES FORCE US TO TACKLE PRESENT DIPLOMATICALLY,
THE TRUTH REMAINS THE HISTORY OF LAHORE RAILWAY STATION.
WILLIAM BRUNTON ARCHITECT, MIAN SULTAN CONTRACTOR, AND
MIAN RAHEEM BAKSH ACTUAL FOREMAN AND BUILDER STATION.

I was born in Lahore, and the favourite means of long distance travel was the Railway. Every year we picked up our luggage and as a family plan our annual trip to Karachi. My fathers favourite spot was Delhi but after some years, Delhi was impossible to reach safely. The last time as a family we left Delhi, there was acute disturbances, probably in Amritsar. People on rail track stopping our train journey. Tear gas on the Station itself and we were huddled in a rest house toilet, putting wet towels to shield our eyes. Not all was good between the Sikhs and the Muslims after the massive killings at time of partition. My mother and sister, stranded in Amritsar, came back at the brave move of my Khaloo (Khalas husband who had a factory in Shahdara). The journey was long and tiring but some sleeping berths were always reserved for us. Our delight to sleep above the seats of lower passengers. 
In those days, a link with Railways was a prestigious thing and a lot of our relatives were in the Railways. After partition my maternal cousin was General Manager Railways, his brother Chief Medical Officer Railways, and an actual cousin, Chief Mechanical Engineer Railways. My grandmother’s brothers were in the Railways too. My father was educated at the Railway Technical School, Lahore.  
In reality, the relationship between fathers and sons were not friends like life today. My father was involved in ancestral studies but never shared such things with us. However his emphasis was on the times of Shah Jahan, and knew or cared nothing for recent family achievements. He never told us of our ancestral attachment to the Lahore Railway Station. Going through the records of our relatives, I came across other information about my grandfather and great grandfather and his father, Mian Salah Mimar of Kocha Chabuk Sawaran Lahore. There was a miniature in our house, and I was transfixed at the sight of a man, who headed our various generations. It was love in rapture. A lot of meaningless nobodies are always trying to find links of relations with us, but we were a small family. My fathers paternal family was very limited. His son Mian Raheem Baksh alias Haeemo was linked to many constructions, and we find his name in Khalsa Darbar records as well as certificates of English administration in Lahore. Lahore Railway Station was linked with him as well as Mian Sultan, the famous contractor of Lahore..
The English administrative structure was made up of highly educated, skilled as well as manipulative people. These bureaucrats knew that to control the vast track of Hindustan, there was a need to link all the portions of the region with a fast moving track, so that uprisings could be checked in time and rebellions quashed. Along it was the commercial motive of looting every juicy blood of the nation. Railways was an excellent means of doing the same. Gradually Lahore was an important city and the Rail was destined to pass through it. They were not bothered with clearing the rubble in way of any Muslim monuments on their rail track. The destruction on the way was inevitable. In addition each Railway Station was to be like a fort to be filled with soldiers at first cry of dissent, and the soldiers trained to show no mercy to the citizens. Even today the same principle applies to things.. 
The Railway Museum in Lahore as well as that in Golra Sharif cater to preservation of historical carriages, and no archives are there. Possibly they exist somewhere But for our reference we search a book published in 1853, and William Brunton termed as the Architect of the Railway Station Lahore. Without doubt the contract was handed over to Mian Muhammed Sutan Tekhaydar (contractor), who passed on the actual work to a leading architect of Lahore, Mian Raheem Baksh Mimar. Various work references are available from various British administrators, including R E Egerton, who was Commissioner Lahore and later even the Governor of Punjab, and remembered to this day with his named road, that is Egerton road, Lahore. 

In a momentous book “History of Railways” it is clearly written:
“The Lahore Station was built among the ruins of the ancient city, and great difficulty was experienced in laying the foundations of the various station buildings over the depth of the ruins over the firm soil below. The station was built like a fort so that it could be easily defended in times of danger. They were round bastions provided with loop holes and the roof was surrounded with loop holed parapets for musketry. In the early days there were two entrances equipped with heavy armour doors, which sliding across the opening, completed the scheme of defense. The station today retains its fort-like appearance . It was designed by William Brunton and constructed by contractor Muhammed Sultan at a cost of Rs 500,000. Bricks were used throughout, the outer surface having carefully closed joints and perhaps the masonry could not be bettered even today.” 
And the quality of the masonry was due to Mian Raheem Baksh Mimar expertise without any doubt.
A detailed information is written in my book entitled AIN E KHANA DARA SHIKOH LAHORE. The reason that the complete city of Dara Shikoh in Lahore was dismantled to build the Lahore Railway Station, and a lot of other monuments destroyed too. The Rail ran through the Shahdara monuments and tragically separated the mausoleum of Empress Nur Jahan from that of her brother Asif Khan and husband Emperor Jahangeer. And the serai was used as a Railway shed. And it ran through the mausoleum of Ali Mardan Khan too. Construction was made with the view of the soil and condition of the track in heavy rain and floods which were plentiful in Lahore. In a memorandum William Brunton says this very plainly. It took time to construct as they waited for rainy months to figure out the correct path. I have noted the details of Willisam Brunton in my book. A blog cannot accommodate all the information.
POSTSCRIPT:Ms Farwa Batool requested information about the Lahore Railway Station for a documentary. I tried my best but she was thinking on parallel lines, and not willing to listen to me. Stuck on the idea that the Railway museum would have archives. This is Pakistan, no one cares for the present, who cares about the past? Cheapsters are on the internet as paid instruments of destroying Pakistan and its Ideology and romanticizing Mandirs and Gurudwaras. India is destroying our heritage  there and we are obsessed with saving their ordinary things. Money makes the mare go and in Pakistan mares gallop all the time.