From 1878, the railway route from Kolkata, then called Calcutta, was in two laps.

The first lap was a 185 km journey along the Eastern Bengal State Railway from Calcutta Station (later renamed Sealdah) to Damookdeah Ghat on the southern bank of the Padma River, then across the river in a ferry and the second lap of the journey.

A 336 km metre gauge line of the North Bengal Railway linked Saraghat on the northern bank of the Padma to Siliguri.

In 1926 the metre-gauge section north of the bridge was converted to broad gauge, and so the entire Calcutta - Siliguri route became broad-gauge.

As of 2010, the 64 kilometres (40 mi) long Saidpur-Chilahati line was in such a bad shape that there was no fast train between Dhaka and Chilahati.