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By Gautam C
In case you are planning to visit India then you definitely need to utilize the services of Indian Railways if you want to travel through the length and breadth of the country. You would be amazed to know that it is one of the largest and busiest railway networks in the world carrying sixteen million passengers on a daily basis. It also carries more than one million tones of freight on a daily basis and with an employee strength surpassing 1.6 million is also one of the biggest commercial employers and is only next to Chinese Army in terms of people recruited by it.
The railway network was established in India way back in 1853 and by the time of Independence in 1947 had forty-two rail systems that were later on nationalized in 1951 to become a single unit and hence earn the distinction of being one of the largest railway networks in the world. With Indian railways now rests the responsibility of operating both suburban and long distance railway network.
Indian Railways is spread across length and breadth of the entire country covering a total of 39, 233 miles and in terms of infrastructure operates more than 14,444 trains backed by 7,739 locomotives and 39,263 coaches. The longest train journey that you can experience on Indian Railways is the HimSagar Express that runs between Jammu Tawi and KanyaKumari covering a whopping distance of 4,751 km within a time period of 66 hours. To its credit it even has the longest platform in the world at Kharagpur measuring 2,733 ft in length. Also in case you are looking forward to revisit the British Raj era then you should definitely travel on the Fairy Queen that was started more than hundred years ago in 1855. Hopefully you would have a good time traveling on the Indian Railways.
If you are looking forward to know more about Indian Railways then you will probably have to go more than 175 years back when plan for railway system in Indian was put forward in 1932 but nothing happened until 1844 when Lord Hardinge who was then the Governor general of India gave the green signal to private entrepreneurs to set up a railway system in India and heavy interest from UK investors led to the creation of railway system at a faster pace in the country.
It took another seven years until 1851 when the first train was introduced in India which was used for hauling of construction materials in Roorkee and by 1853 the first passenger train service started running between Bori Bunder, Bombay and Thane. By 1880 the Indian Railways network was covering major port cities of Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata and five years later it even started building its own locomotives.
Later on various independent kingdoms came up with their own railways system and the network started spreading to other regions including Andhra Pradesh, Assam and Rajasthan. It was only in 1907 that Indian Railways started churning profits for the first time. 1908 saw electronic locomotives being introduced but WWI and WWII almost crippled the railways system in the country and independence saw major part of the network moving to Pakistan and therefore India was hence left with forty-two separate railway systems owned by Indian princely states which was merged to forma single unit called Indian Railways.
Zones were adopted in 1951 and as a result six zones were formed in 1952. Diesel and electric locomotives replaced steam locomotives by 1985 with computerization of the entire railway network-taking place streamlining the whole process by 1995 and since then the journey of Indian railways towards modernization continues.
About the Author: Gautam Chhabra is an accomplished writer and SEO consultant.
Read more : mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-railway-map.htm
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