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Follow for daily insights, Indian Railways has 114,500 kilometres (71,147 mi).[4] of total track over a route of 65,000 kilometres (40,389 mi)[4] and 7,500 stations. It has the world's fourth largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China.[5] The railways carry over 30 million passengers and 2.8 million tons of freight daily.[4] In 2011-2012 Railway earnt INR104,278.79 crore (US$20.8 billion) which consists of INR69,675.97 crore (US$13.9 billion) from freight and INR28,645.52 crore (US$5.71 billion) from passengers tickets.[6]
Indian Railways is the world's fourth largest commercial or utility employer, by number of employees, with over 1.4 million employees.[4] after Wal-Mart with 2.1 million employees, China National Petroleum Corporation with 1.61 million employees and State Grid Corporation of China with 1.53 million employees.[7] As for rolling stock, IR owns over 229,381 Freight Wagons, 59,713 Passenger Coaches and 9,213 Locomotives.[8]
Railways were first introduced to India in 1853. By 1947, the year of India's independence, there were forty-two rail systems. In 1951 the systems (many of which were already government-owned) were nationalized 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. The Indian railways is proposing to build the highest railway track in the world overtaking the current record of the Beijing-Lhasa Railway line.[9][10]
From 20 December 2010, the railways had deployed a 5 digit numbering system instead of the 4 digit system.[11] The need is due to the fact that the Indian Railways runs 10,000 trains daily.[12][13] Only a prefix of the digit 1 will be added to the four-digit numbers of the existing trains to make the transition smoother.[14] The special trains run to clear festivals and holiday rush shall have the prefix of 0 (zero)[15] In 31 March 2011, 21,014 km of the total 64,215 km route length is electrified (33%).[16] Since 1960, almost all electrified sections on IR use 25,000 V AC traction through overhead catenary delivery.[16][17]
