INDIAN RAILWAYS

Indian Railways is the central government-owned railway company of India, which owns and operates most of the country's rail transport. It is overseen by the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India.

Indian Railways has more than 64,215 kilometers (39,901 mi) of track and 7,083 stations. It has the world's fourth largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China.

The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country and carry over 30 million passengers and 2.8 million tons of freight daily. It is one of the world's largest commercial or utility employers, with more than 1.6 million employees.
As to rolling stock, IR owns over 230,000 (freight) wagons, 60,000 coaches and 9,000 locomotives.

Railways were first introduced to India in 1853. By 1947, the year of India's independence, there were forty-two rail systems. In 1951 the systems were nationalised as one unit, becoming one of the largest networks in the world.

IR operates both long distance and suburban rail systems on a multi gauge network of broad, metre and narrow gauges. It also owns locomotive and coach production facilities.

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Types of Passenger Services:-

1.Duronto Express
2.Rajdhani Express.
3.Shatabdi Express.
4.Jan Shatabdi Express.
5.Garib Rath.
6.Superfast Mail/Express.
7.Mail/Express.
8.Passenger/Fast Passenger.
9.Suburban services.

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Notable trains and achievements:-

There are two UNESCO World Heritage Sites on IR —

The Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus and the Mountain railways of India. The latter is not contiguous, but actually consists of three separate railway lines located in different parts of India:

• The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a narrow gauge railway in West Bengal.

• The Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a metre gauge railway in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu

• The Kalka-Shimla Railway, a narrow gauge railway in the Shivalik mountains in Himachal Pradesh.

• The Maharaja Railways (Gwalior Light Railway), a narrow gauge line of just 0.6m width from Gwalior to Sheopur of 198 km. in length is world's longest narrow gauge railway line is in the UNESCO world heritage tentative list.

• The Neral-Matheran Railway, a narrow gauge railway connecting Matheran is also a historic line.

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Railway zones:-

Indian Railways is divided into zones, which are further sub-divided into divisions. The number of zones in Indian Railways increased from six to eight in 1951, nine in 1952, and finally 17 in 2010. Each zonal railway is made up of a certain number of divisions, each having a divisional headquarters.

There are a total of sixty-seven divisions.

The Delhi Metro is being built and operated by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Limited (DMRC). The Government of India and the Government of Delhi jointly set up a company called the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on March 5, 1995 with E. Sreedharan as the managing director. He is Padma Vibhushan awardee(Second highest honour) by Government of India. It is no way connected to Indian Railways.

The zones are further divided into divisions under the control of Divisional Railway Managers (DRM). The divisional officers of engineering, mechanical, electrical, signal and telecommunication, accounts, personnel, operating, commercial and safety branches report to the respective Divisional Manager and are in charge of operation and maintenance of assets.

Further down the hierarchy tree are the Station Masters who control individual stations and the train movement through the track territory under their stations' administration.
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Fares and ticketing:-

• Fares on the Indian Railways across categories are among the cheapest in the world. In the past few years, despite a recessionary environment, the Indian Railways have not raised fares on any class of service.

• On the contrary, there has been a minor dip in fares in some categories.

• Ticketing services are available at all major and minor railway stations across India.

• In 2003, Indian Railways launched online ticketing services through the IRCTC website.

• Apart from E-tickets, passengers can also book I-tickets that are basically regular printed tickets, except that they are booked online and delivered by post.

• According to comScore, the Indian Railways website was the top visited Indian travel site in April 2010, with 7.7 million visitors.

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I am a huge fan of the electric locomotives of Indian Railways such as the red hot WAP-4 and the sizzling white WAP-7.