Celebrating 165 years, Indian Railways bows with pride exhibiting its exceptional service

New Delhi, April 16: Applauds to the wide range of services given to its commuters, Indian Railways takes a bow with pride and honor for giving its passengers services for 165 years. India together celebrates the glorious years of success.

 

Indian Railways can be rightly called the lifeline of transportation within the country. Today we have railways covering the longest and some of the remotest of destinations within the country. It is the fourth largest railway network in the world, size-wise.

 

 

 

 

 

  

It is generally believed that the railways were first introduced to India on April 16th, 1853. The Bori Bunder to Thane line is customarily seen as the birth of the world’s largest railway systems, but the plan for the first rail system was drawn in 1832. On December 22, 1851, the first steam locomotive in India was used during the construction of the Solani canal near Roorkee, a city in Haridwar district, Uttarakhand. Bengal Sappers of the Indian Army built the railway line to carry soil for the construction of the canal from Piran Kaliyar, 6.2 miles (10 km) from the city.

  

Laying the first rail tracks at Chintadripet in Madras, the first train flagged off was on April 16, 1853, between Bori Bunder (later Victoria Terminus, now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) in Bombay (now Mumbai) and Thane. It travelled 21 miles (34 Km) with the aid of three locomotives: Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan. 400 invited guests in 14 carriages enjoyed the historic ride. This journey set a milestone in passenger train service.

Hovering to encompass the main idea of providing undue services to the commuters, the Indian Railway has every now and then proved itself to be available for passengers. Equipping itself with high technology, the national transporter has made things feasible for all of us.

Some interesting facts of Indian Railways are:

The Indian Railways network covers a distance of 127,760 km in the track length and a route distance of 67,368 kms.

The annual tally is 8421 million passengers with 9921 trains connecting 7,172 stations over the country.

The first electric train ran between Bombay Victoria Terminus and Kurla on the harbour line on February 3, 1935.

The longest distance is covered by Vivek Express (Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari). It covers a distance of 4273 kms and has a run time of 80 hours, 15 minutes!

Indian Railways have a mascot called Bholu, the elephant. It is a cartoon of an elephant holding a signal lamp with green light in one hand. The mascot was unveiled on the 150th year commemoration on 16 April 2002 in Bangalore

Indian Railways in the eight-largest employer in the world. As of March 2017, there were 1.308 million employees in the service.

Toilets were introduced in the trains after the service completed about 50 years.

Computerized reservations began in New Delhi from the year 1986. The IRCTC, railway platform for booking tickets and services online started in 2006-07. And the website IRCTC is said to get close to 12 lakh hits per minute. It has 21 million customers.

It is not just this. The railways have launched new schemes and techniques for the passengers which will make travelling an easy and fun experience. Laying foundation for the bullet train, people are eager to experience the super-fast journey. Not just this but the department has also exhibited its service through exhibitions on locomotives and rail museum in New Delhi. Apart from this celebrating the exceptional 165 years Madhya Pradesh has also come forward to showcase their respect to the national transporter the ‘Indian Railways’. the exhibition is slated from April 15 to April 17, 2018.

 

Apps and benefits have become an added advantage to the passengers to go digital with each coming month, Indian Railways gifting its commuters yet another feasible technique and technological advantage.