Indian Railways (B)

Abstract

Indian Railways is the world’‘s second largest railway system under a single management, and the largest in Asia. IR has a regular work-force of 1.6 million employees. Its fleet of rolling stock includes over 9000 locomotives, 30,000 passenger cars (coaches), and 350,000 freight cars. IR is a multi-gauge multi-traction system, covering over 100,000 km of track. It operates about 10,000 trains daily, carrying 10 million passengers and one million tonnes of freight traffic. IR virtually forms the lifeline of the country’‘s economy, catering to all its needs for large-scale movement of both passengers and freight. Passenger traffic in IR has been growing steadily over the years and it recorded 350 billion PKMS in 1996-97, and this figure is expected to reach 430 billion PKMs by the turn of this century. The Railway Board is concerned about its ability to provide a satisfactory level of passenger service. There is increasing demand for new services, extension of existing services, increased frequency for existing services, additional sleeper coaches for long distance services, improved passenger amenities, and so on.