Indian Railways

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 1,119,848.9 million (US$19 billion) which consists of 696,759.7 million (US$12 billion) from freight and 286,455.2 million (US$4.9 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.

Indian Railways is the world's ninth largest commercial or utility employer, by number of employees, with over 1.4 million employees. As for rolling stock, IR holds over 239,281 Freight Wagons, 59,713 Passenger Coaches and 9,549 Locomotives (43 steam, 5,197 diesel and 4,309 electric locomotives). The trains have a 5 digit numbering system as the Indian Railways runs about 10,000 trains daily. As of 31 March 2013, 23,541 km (14,628 mi) (36%) of the total 65,000 km (40,000 mi) km route length was electrified. Since 1960, almost all electrified sections on IR use 25,000 Volt AC traction through overhead catenary delivery.

Railway zones

Indian Railways is divided into several zones, which are further sub-divided into divisions. The number of zones in Indian Railways increased from six to eight in 1951, nine in 1952 and sixteen in 2003. Each zonal railway is made up of a certain number of divisions, each having a divisional headquarters. There are a total of sixty-eight divisions.

Each of the sixteen zones is headed by a general manager who reports directly to the Railway Board. The zones are further divided into divisions under the control of divisional railway managers (DRM). The divisional officers of engineering, mechanical, electrical, signal and telecommunication, accounts, personnel, operating, commercial, security and safety branches report to the respective Divisional Manager and are in charge of operation and maintenance of assets. Further down the hierarchy tree are the station masters who control individual stations and the train movement through the track territory under their stations' administration.

Zonal railways details[edit]

Sl. No	Name	Abbr.	Date Established	Route km	Headquarters	Divisions
1.	Central	CR	5 November 1951	3905	Mumbai	Mumbai, Bhusawal, Pune, Solapur, Nagpur
2.	East Central	ECR	1 October 2002	3628	Hajipur	Danapur, Dhanbad, Mughalsarai, Samastipur, Sonpur
3.	East Coast	ECoR	1 April 2003	2677	Bhubaneswar	Khurda Road, Sambalpur and Waltair (Visakhapatnam)
4.	Eastern	ER	04-1952	2414	Kolkata	Howrah, Sealdah, Asansol, Malda
5.	North Central	NCR	1 April 2003	3151	Allahabad	Allahabad, Agra, Jhansi
6.	North Eastern	NER	1952	3667	Gorakhpur	Izzatnagar, Lucknow, Varanasi
7.	North Western	NWR	1 October 2002	5459	Jaipur	Jaipur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Jodhpur
8.	Northeast Frontier	NFR	15 January 1958	3907	Guwahati	Alipurduar, Katihar, Rangia, Lumding, Tinsukia
9.	Northern	NR	14 April 1952	6968	Delhi	Delhi, Ambala, Firozpur, Lucknow, Moradabad
10.	South Central	SCR	2 October 1966	5803	Secunderabad	Vijayawada, Hyderabad, Guntakal, Guntur, Nanded,Secunderabad
11.	South East Central	SECR	1 April 2003	2447	Bilaspur	Bilaspur, Raipur, Nagpur
12.	South Eastern	SER	1955	2631	Kolkata	Adra, Chakradharpur, Kharagpur, Ranchi,
13.	South Western	SWR	1 April 2003	3177	Hubli	Hubli, Bangalore, Mysore
14.	Southern	SR	14 April 1951	5098	Chennai	Chennai, Trichy, Madurai, Salem,Palakkad,Thiruvananthapuram
15.	West Central	WCR	1 April 2003	2965	Jabalpur	Jabalpur, Bhopal, Kota
16.	Western	WR	5 November 1951	6182	Mumbai	Mumbai Central, Ratlam, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Bhavnagar,Vadodara
17.	Metro Railway, Kolkata	MR	31 December 2010	26	Kolkata	-
	Total			64105

Indian Railways earns about 70% of its revenues from the freight traffic (Rs. 686.2 billion from freight and Rs. 304.6 billion from passengers in 2011–12). Most of its profits come from movement of freight. It makes a loss on passenger traffic. It deliberately keeps its passenger fares low and cross-subsidises the loss-making passenger traffic with the profit-making freight traffic.

Since the 1990s, Indian Railways has stopped single-wagon consignments and provides only full rake freight trains for goods. Most of its freight earnings come from movement of bulk goods such as coal, cement, food grains and iron ore in full rakes. It is continually losing freight traffic to road.