All About Indian Railways

November 21st, 2009 |

Indian Railways is believed to be one of the largest rail networks across the world. It covers a length of over 62,000 km and takes nearly about millions of passengers on a daily basis. travel

The history of Indian railways is a long and rich starting its journey from during the British rule in the country. British during their rule required a fast mode of transport for troop movement and so they introduced trains. The first train was introduced on April 16, 1853 from Bori Bunder to Thane and comprised 14 carriages which could comfortably carry about 400 passengers. After that many new passenger trains were introduced that spread across the length and breadth of India crossing the distance between Jammu and Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and from Gujarat to Assam, crossing all major cities between their routes including Kolkata, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kerala, Pune, Bangalore, and Mumbai.

It is also said that in the year 1985, early introduced steam locomotives were replaced by diesel engines. Later in 1995, another revolution was introduced in the railways; the revolution was computerization of entire railway network.

Today the Indian rail system has three different gauges based upon the track areas and rail traffic. These are the Broad Gauge, Meter Gauge, and Narrow Gauge. Broad gauge is used in areas that have heavy traffic, meter gauge is used where there is less traffic and narrow gauge is used in mountain ranges like Nilgiri Mountain Railway and Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. These three gauges are further divided into 17 different rail zones.

The 17 rail zones that are essential part of the Indian railway system are North, North East, North East Frontier, Eastern, South Eastern, South Central, Southern, Central, Western, South Western, North Western, West Central, North Central, South East Central, East Coast, and East Central.