The History Of Indian Railway
The history of rail transport in India began in the mid-nineteenth
century. In 1849, there was not a single kilometre of railway line in India. A
British engineer, Robert Maitland Brereton, was responsible for the expansion
of the railways from 1857 onwards. The Allahabad-Jabalpur branch line of the
East Indian Railway had been opened in June 1867. Brereton was responsible for
linking this with the Great Indian Peninsula Railway, resulting in a combined
network of 6,400 km (4,000 mi). Hence it became possible to travel directly
from Bombay to Calcutta. This route was officially opened on 7 March 1870 and
it was part of the inspiration for French writer Jules Verne's book Around the
World in Eighty Days. At the opening ceremony, the Viceroy Lord Mayo concluded
that “it was thought desirable that, if possible, at the earliest possible
moment, the whole country should be covered with a network of lines in a
uniform system”.
Indian Railways (reporting mark IR) is an Indian state-owned
enterprise, owned and operated by the Government of India through the Ministry
of Railways. It is one of the world's largest railway networks comprising
115,000 km (71,000 mi) of track over a route of 65,000 km (40,000 mi) and 7,500
stations. As of December 2012, it transported over 25 million passengers daily
(over 9 billion on an annual basis). In 2011, IR carried over 8,900 million
passengers annually or more than 24 million passengers daily (roughly half of
which were suburban passengers) and 2.8 million tons of freight daily. In
2011–2012 Indian Railways had revenues of 1119848.9 million (US$20 billion)
which consists of 696759.7 million (US$13 billion) from freight and 286455.2
million (US$5.2 billion) from passengers tickets.
Railways were first introduced to India in 1853 from Bombay to
Thane. In 1951 the systems were nationalised as one unit, the Indian Railways,
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 at several
places in India and are assigned codes identifying their gauge, kind of power
and type of operation. Its operations cover twenty four states and three union
territories and also provides limited international services to Nepal,
Bangladesh and Pakistan.
