Indian Railways, Railway System of India

Indian Railways

Rajdhani Express. Images From Wikipedia.

A view of Garib Rath. Images From Wikipedia.

As we all know Indian railways is the fourth largest railway network in the world. It is also the fourth largest railway in the world employing over 1 million people. 

It seems to be odd to post something about Indian railways but I advise you to read some FAQ about Indian Railways.

 

Why Indian Trains are slow in comparison to French or Japanese railways ?

 

Most people have a misconception that Indian Trains are slow moving at just 100 - 120 kmph, whereas TGV or bullet trains are fast moving at a speed of 300 - 400 kmph. The basic question is Indian train engines are not as powerful as the engines of foreign trains.

The question I want to ask you is, Don't you look at how much coaches each of the engines in Indian trains pull. An normal Indian train  pulls 15-30 coaches at a time whereas A good train pulls 50-150 coaches at a time. This reduces the overall speed of the train. This is not so for the foreign trains as they have to pull a maximum of 3-4 coaches.

How many people travel everyday using Indian Railways?

 

Atleast 1 million travel everyday using railways. Over 10 million tonnes of  goods are carried everyday.

The people who travel via Indian railways are a collection of people from every corner of the country. This is one of the few place where passengers of such a diverse country come under one roof thus giving us a warm feel. Such environment, long journey, train moving with 'chuk-ckuk' beat is difficult to find in foreign railways.

What are the ill-effects Indian Railways is suffering from ?

 

 Indian railways has suffered from problems mainly from passengers side.

• Many passengers travel without tickets.
• Thefts and damaging of railway property has not yet stopped. How could people destroy their own property?
• People stop the trains by pulling chains unnecessarily mostly before the stations causing heavy damage and avoiding railway from moving on time.
• Even after railway stations are cleaned as per schedule, people have made them dirty for no reasons.

 

Can Indian Railways be privatised ?

 

No, presently it is not possible to privatise Indian Railways. It is a huge network with several people working under it. All this need a government with lot of  resouces to handle. 

But Privatisation will have many good effects such as better administration,  increase of Railway standards and reduced corruption. On the other hand it will make it difficult for the passengers to travel beacuse of high price of Railways.

Why is it difficult to get tickets for the Indian Railways ? 

 

Millions of passengers travel via Indian Railways everyday. These are generally the people who find it economic to travel by railways, or students who have frequent travels from their college city to home city. In such a huge crowd, it ts quite natural that it will be difficult to find get tickets.

 The only way to get out of this problem is by increasing the price of Railway by leaps and bounds. This will reduce no. of passengers traveling by railways & increase the standard of the railway.

As far as I believe, Indian railways are the best railway system ever built. What are your opinions about Indian Railways?? Mention in Comments.