Indian Railways has always been the backbone of the Indian transportation system. Since its inception during the British rule, railways have been India’s main public transport system. Due to the paramount importance of the Indian railway in the mobility of the great population of this vast expanse of land, it has been rightly said that to discover the fascinatingly diverse patterns of the Indian cultural mosaic, it is only necessary to take a train journey across the a the length and breadth of India. That is the commutation of Indian citizenship in this mode of transportation. Indian Rail transportation is the most widely used long-distance transportation system in the country. The network has a total length of more than 63,140 km (39,200 miles). One of the busiest and heaviest carriers in the world, the Indian Railways carries over 5 billion passengers and 350 million tons of cargo in one year.
Although it is the backbone of India’s transportation system, The Railways runs on three categories of track: wide gauge, metric gauge, and narrow gauge. Among these three types of track gauge, track gauge is the most common type of track. It is 1,676 mm (5.5 ft) wide and some 86,526 km of track under the Indian railway network runs on this type of track. In some places where Broad Gauge is not feasible, Meter Gauge is being used. However, that covers only a much shorter length of the rail network. Again, Narrow Gauge is present in very few places, especially in mountainous sections. It covers around 3,651 km and is used mainly on the Nilgiris and Darjeeling sections. Concerted arrangements are being made for the implementation of the Unigauge project to convert all tracks to Broad Gauge. Zoos in India also use Narrow Track, and the Indian Railways maintain those tracks as well.
There is no doubt that the backbone of Indian transportation is the Indian railways. It is a gigantic transportation system that has multifaceted aspects. Over a length of more than 63,028 km, 16,000 km of track have been electrified. Indian Railways passenger accommodation is divided into several categories.
The categories are: a) 1st class air conditioning 1A; 2) 2A AC two-level; c) 3A AC of three levels; d) CC AC chair car; e) 2-seater class; and f) G General. Indian Railways has Bholu as a mascot. Again, trains are classified in terms of speed, number of stops, fare structure, etc. Express trains are identified by a four-digit number. The first two digits indicate the zone and the division respectively and the last two are the serial number of the train.