Cotton traffic, Akola Station, Maharashtra, India, c 1930.

Bales of cotton being loaded onto a freight train at Akola, on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway. Much of the cotton produced in India was exported to Britain which was in control of India at this time. It was transported by rail to docks where it was shipped abroad. The GIPR was opened in 1853, from Bombay to Thane. It expanded quickly and by 1870 stretched all the way across India to Calcutta.