 In Benares there was a durbar on 7 February to celebrate the building of the railway and particularly the bridging of the "Son" river, the largest tributary of the Ganges.The Chief Engineer responsible for all this construction from 1851 to 1862 was George Turnbull who was acclaimed in the Indian "Official Gazette" of 7 February 1863 paragraph 5 as the ""First railway engineer of India"".Some historians like Irfan Habib argue that because the contracts signed between East India Company and EIR in 1849 guaranteed 5 percent return on all capital invested, initially there was no inducement for economy or for employing Indians instead of high-paid Europeans.