Indian Railways: Interesting facts

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With more than 64,015 km (39,777) of track and 6,909 stations, Indian Railways (IR) has world’s fourth largest railway network after those of US, Russia and China. Also, IR is India’s single largest employer with more than 1.6 million employees.

Well, these are the known facts about IR. Let us look at some other interesting trivia about IR.

1. UNESCO has listed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and the mountain railways of India including Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, Kalka-Shimla Railway and the Neral-Matheran Railway as World Heritage Sites.

2. The narrow-gauge line from Gwalior to Sheopur of 198 km is world’s longest narrow gauge railway line and is in the UNESCO world heritage tentative list.

3. The highest speed ever touched by a train in India is 184km/h in 2000, when the LHB Alstom passenger coaches were undergoing speed trials (on the Delhi-Ghaziabad route)..

4. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus at Mumbai is India’s first railway station.

5. Flying Rani introduced in 2005 is India’s first double-decker train that operates between Mumbai Central and Surat while the first double-decker AC train was introduced in November 2010, running between Dhanbad and Howrah.

6. Sikkim and Meghalaya are the only states in India not connected by rail.

7. Ib, near Jharsuguda on the Howrah-Nagpur main line (South Eastern Railway) and Od, on the Anand-Godhra section of WR are the stations with the shortest names, where as Sri Venkatanarasimharajuvariipeta on the Arakkonam-Renigunta section of the Southern Railway is the station with the longest name.

8. The Himsagar Express between Kanyakumari and Jammu Tawi has the longest run in terms of time and distance in IR. It takes 71 hr and 45 min to cover a distance of 3,751 km.

9. The Navyug Express between Mangalore and Jammu Tawi crosses the largest number of states - Karnataka, Kerala, TN, AP, Maharashtra, MP, UP, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir, where as the Kolhapur-Gondia Maharashtra Exp. covers the largest distance entirely in one state (Maharashtra/1346km).

10. The current record for the longest non-stop run between two destinations is held by Trivandrum Rajdhani Express that covers a distance of 528 km between Kota and Vadodara in 6 hr and 30 min without a single stop (stops at signals and stops due to track work or loco failure is not considered).