Perambur

Perambur, is a suburb in North Chennai (the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu) in India and also the fourth largest city in India.

Though the nomenclature source of Perambur is not apparently known, it is widely regarded as a place which used to be a bamboo forest a few hundred years ago, around the Huzur Gardens area, which currently houses the Simpsons Pvt. Ltd,. In Tamil, "Perambu" means bamboo and "oor" means city or place. It is located 4 km from Chennai Central station.

This area was annexed to Chennai in 1742 AD.

Schools

Perambur is an educational hub for schooling. It is served by a number of schools namely,St Josephs Girls High School, Railway Mixed higher secondary school, DRBCCC (RBCC), , Jamalia Hr Sec School, Lourdes girls School, Vivekananda Vidyalaya,Kaligi Ranganathan Montford matriculaton higher secondary School, VOC Vidyalaya, Veera Savarkar, Bharatha Matha, Don Bosco, St. Marys,Sri J.R.E.T Schools, Corporation Higher Secondary School

Localities

• Integral Coach Factory
• ICF Residential Quarters
• Thiru V.K.Nagar
• Mahakavi Bharathi Nagar
• Periyar Road
• Mangalapuram
• Perambur Barracks
• Southern Railway Quarters
• Jawahar Nagar
• Ex-Servicemen Colony
• Secretariat Colony
• Agaram
• Perambur high road
• Panamthope Colony

Railways

Perambur is served by three railway stations. They are Perambur, Perambur Carriage Works and Perambur Loco Works. More information about transportation is available in Transport in Chennai.

Southern Railway's workshop is located here. This workshop was established in the year 1856 to serve the erstwhile Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company. It was a combined Locomotive, Carriage and Wagon POH & Coach building workshop and later bifurcated in 1932 to deal with Carriage & Wagon POH activity only, shifting the Locomotive overhaul activity to the new Loco workshop which was built adjacent to the original workshop. These two workshops are served by Perambur Carriage Works and Perambur Loco Works stations respectively. In 1951 the Southern Railway was formed by integrating the erstwhile South Indian Railway company, Madras & Southern Mahratta Railway Company, and Mysore State Railway with all their workshops and assets.

When the ICF shell division was started, furnishing works were done at this works for the new shells turned out by ICF. This activity was done from 1956 to 1963, until ICF furnishing division came out. From 1965 onwards the main activity of Carriage & Wagon POH were started and POH of Air conditioned coaches are being under taken since 1954.

It is also one of the earliest British settlements in Chennai, mainly because of the railway establishments during the 1850's. Perambur is also noted for the largest presence of Anglo-Indians in Chennai and arguably in South India, mainly because of the erstwhile aplenty British settlements in and around Perambur, during the construction and running of the ICF.

Perambur, incidentally, is one of the major railway hubs in Chennai not only because of ICF but also due to a number of express/super-fast trains having stops. Perambur is the fifth largest station in Chennai in terms of volume of passengers handles after Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore, Tambaram and Mambalam.

Railways in Perambur is also noteworthy because of the visit of the Father of our Nation (India) Mahatma Gandhi in 1933 ([1]).

Neighbouring places

Perambur is one of the most important places in terms of serving as connection between the Northern mofussils of Chennai to the rest of the Greater Chennai. The neighbouring places of Perambur are Sembium (2 km), Periyar Nagar (3 km), T.V.K.Nagar (3 km), Kolathur (4 km), Moolakadai (2 km), Madhavaram(8 km), Vyasarpadi (2 km) and Doveton or Purasawalkam (3 km).

Fly over

Perambur connects with the greater Chennai mainly through Vyasarpadi. The rail over bridge connecting Perambur railway station with that Vyasarpadi Jeeva had been a source of transportation discomfort because of its narrow pass and low road which used to flood during rain. In 1999 the then DMK government decided to build a flyover along with 9 others. But the work reached a halt when one of the columns started sinking. This led to the cost of the proposed flyover shoot to Rs.21 crore (210 millions) to Rs 34 crore (340 millions). Furthermore DMK lost in the consecutive 2001 elections (although its ally CPI(M) retaining Perambur constituency) which led to a further stalemate in executing the project. ([2]

The flyovers became the centre of political debacle to follow for the next 5 years ([3]. After DMK came back to power it had started working on the project once again but this time with an even more shooting up of the proposed cost. If this flyover construction is complete, it will be very useful for the people living in Perambur, Kolathur, T.V.K.Nagar, Periyarnagar, Aynavaram and Madhavaram.

Administration

The current Member of Legislative Assembly for the Perambur constituency is K.Mahendran from the CPI-M party (an alliance of DMK). Perambur is bifurcated by two other constituencies, namely that of Vyasarpadi and Purasaiwalkam. It also falls under the North Chennai constituency for the Lok Sabha elections. Perambur comes under the 51st, 52nd and 53rd wards of the Chennai City Corporation.

See also

• Transport in Chennai

External links

• Perambur residents grappling with urban chaos[4]