Kanchrapara

Kanchrapara is a city and municipality in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, India, and part of the area covered by the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority. It grew from 1862 onward around the Sealdah to Kushtia broad gauge railway, when the Eastern Bengal State Railway built a locomotive workshop and station on the northern edge of Bizpur mouza in 1863, with a carriage and wagon shop added in 1914. A planned railway township followed, and the municipality was later carved out to serve the growing population. The Kanchrapara Railway Workshop served the defence department in the Second World War and became a base workshop for overhauling electric locomotives after electric traction arrived in eastern India in 1962. The 2011 census counted 120,345 people in the municipal area and its outgrowth, and the district handbook gives 9.06 square kilometres.