EARNINGS OF INDIAN RAILWAY

The total approximate earnings of Indian Railways on originating basis during April 2012 were Rs 9658.02 crore as compared to Rs 8130.27 crore

during the same period last year, registering an increase of 18.79%.

The total goods earnings have gone up from Rs 5595.69 crore during April 2011 to Rs 6916.39 crore during April 2012, showing an increase of

23.60%.

The total passenger revenue earnings in April 2012 were Rs 2384.61 crore compared to Rs 2214.54 crore during the same period last year,

registering an increase of 7.68 per cent.

The revenue earnings from other coaching amounted to Rs 247.37 crore during April 2012 compared to Rs 223.34 crore during the same period last

year, showing an increase of 10.76 per cent.

The total approximate number of passengers booked during April 2012 were 686.29 million compared to 657.59 million during the same period last

year, showing an increase of 4.36 per cent.

In the suburban and non-suburban sectors, the number of passengers booked during April 2012 were 347.36 million and 338.93 million compared to

345.71 million and 278.43 million during the same period last year, an increase of 0.48 per cent and 8.67 per cent respectively.

Rajdhani Express

Rajdhani Express was introduced in 1969, for providing fast connections (up to 140 km/h/87 mph, speed varies depending upon the particular track section) from various railway stations in the capital city of New Delhi to the capital cities of various states in India (or, in certain cases, prominent cities within the state the train serves). The first Rajdhani Express left New Delhi station for Howrah station to cover a distance of 1,445 km in 16 hours 55mins.
Rajdhani



Old rake of Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express


Mumbai Central-New Delhi Rajdhani ramming just before Borivili


Mumbai Central-New Delhi Rajdhani Express.


Comfortable interiors of a First Class AC compartment in Rajdhani Express
These trains get the highest priority on the Indian railway network. They are fully air-conditioned. Passengers are served complimentary meals during the journey. Depending on the duration and timings of the journey, these could include lunch, high tea, dinner, morning tea and breakfast. Almost all Rajdhani trains offer three classes of accommodation: First Class AC with 2- or 4-berth lockable bedrooms, AC 2-tier with open berths (bays of 4 berths + 2 berths on the other side of the corridor) with curtains for privacy, and AC 3-tier (bays of 6 berths + 2 berths on the side) with curtains for privacy. Currently there are 24 pairs of Rajdhani Express trains, connecting New Delhi to Ahmedabad, Bangalore (2), Bhubaneswar, Bilaspur, Chennai, Guwahati/Dibrugarh, Hyderabad, Ranchi, Kolkata, Jammu, Mumbai, Patna and Thiruvananthapuram. These trains have fewer stops than other express trains. They halt only in state capitals and prominent cities like Vadodara, Bhopal, Ratlam, Nagda, Kota, Jaipur, Allahabad, Jhansi, Lucknow, Kanpur, Gaya, Balasore, Cuttack, Jamshedpur, Dhanbad, Asansol, Bokaro, Nagpur, Panvel, Kazipet, Surat and Raipur.

INDIAN RAILWAYS A MASSIVE UNIT

Indian Railways started its operations in the year 1853 and since then, the progress in operational

quality has been tremendous. Also, Indian Rail is the largest rail network in terms of sheer length and

size. Spread across more than 6400 kilometers, it continues to grow bigger and complex to manage. But,

the unsullied service and ticketing facilities at the Indian Railways reservation center, regardless of

millions of customers visiting the center every day, is commendable. In fact, Railways reservation

website could be viewed in different languages and moreover, it features facilities like railway card

offers, travel maps, train schedules, festive season offers and more.

Being a public sector venture, it is completely run and funded by the government. Jobs are created every

year by Railways for thousands at different levels and people in India are aware about all the perks and

benefits that come with the Railways employment. Railways reservation management team has proposed to

incorporate ideas from top corporates to help them improve on the overall standards. This again would

mean huge job openings at the managerial level. The govt. organization is venturing into rigorous

marketing efforts both for spreading general awareness about rail issues and how public contribution

towards cleanliness is important.

The online ventures of advertising and pictorial presentations are designed to create awareness and

attract passengers. Indian Railways is also planning to lease out the cleaning contract to private

associations, to create better traveling environment for customers. The challenging tasks that lie ahead

are population explosion, technology enhancement, and competition from private companies offering air

travel services at very reasonable cost. Indian Railways reservation process online is hassle free; the

complete process takes only a few minutes involving entering of your personal information and online

payment. It is not only at the IRCTC official website but also at travel portals that the reservations

can be done. Do get it done several days ahead to get confirmed seats; confirmation cannot be guaranteed

with current bookings. If summed up, Indian Railways is amongst the precious assets of India.

Passenger reservation system

A route-based reservation system that facilitates the issue of journey-cum-reservation tickets, which can be issued from any station to any station.

Passenger journey to multiple laps of reservation can be handled from a single terminal window.
The reservation facility is offered round-the-clock (24 hours uninterrupted).

Changes in train profiles (train carriage addition, replacement, de-allocation), route structures, etc., can be made effective immediately with the appropriate contingency handling.

Dynamic definition of the advance reservation period is possible. This feature facilitates defining different advance reservation periods for different trains.

Any train running schedule can be accommodated. Even irregular trains, running on only pre-defined dates, can be defined - for example, a train running every alternate day.

Provides on-line aggregation of EIS figures such as revenue, seat / berth utilisation, etc, and presentation of the summarised data in the form of visual analytics from the operational system's information store. The data aggregation is done incrementally, to inflict minimal impact.

Can operate on a multi-vendor operating system. Multi-vendor hardware and communication equipment are also supported.

IMPRESS is built on open standards and can be easily integrated with similar products and applications with open standards.

Provides automatic database recovery against all kinds of hardware and software failures.

Complete audit trails for transactions and data access.

The application software is parametric, and standard railway business rules are incorporated in the form of data instead of being part of the logic.

Himalayan Railways

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, nicknamed the "Toy Train", is a 2 ft  (610 mm) narrow gauge railway from New Jalpaiguri to Darjeeling in West Bengal, run by the Indian Railways.

It was built between 1879 and 1881 and is about 86 kilometres (53 mi) long. The elevation level is from about 100 m (328 ft) at New Jalpaiguri to about 2,200 metres (7,218 ft) at Darjeeling. Four modern diesel locomotives handle most of the scheduled services: however the daily Kurseong-Darjeeling return service and the daily tourist trains from Darjeeling to Ghum (India's highest railway station) are handled by vintage British-built B Class steam locomotives.Since 1999 the train has been a World Heritage Site as listed by UNESCO. In 2005, UNESCO added the Nilgiri Mountain Railway as an extension to the original designation. In 2008 the 96 kilometres (60 mi), 2.5 feet (760 mm) gauge Kalka–Shimla Railway, opened in 1903, was also added.

Shri Subrato Nath was appointed as first full time Director cum Site Manager of Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR) in 2007. The Head Quarter of DHR was also re-established at Elysia Place, Kurseong. Since then, there is a full time Director to look after this World Heritage Site.

Invention of Interceptor

TRICHY: On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Ponmalai Diesel loco shed, the Divisional Railway

Manager of the Tiruchirappalli, A V Vaidiyalingam, announced the invention of a new gadget that would

stop the shunting loco from going beyond a permissible speed of 15 kmph. The invention that was an

initiative of seven enthusiastic engineers of the shed has been reported to the Railway Board, and must

be replicated for use across the zonal railways.

Unlike the open line long haul locomotive engine, the shunting loco moves on the loop line only. Out of a

total of 120 long haul loco engines, 20 are shunting loco in Trichy division. Meanwhile, when these loco

engines travel at a speed of more than 15 kph there is a distinct possibility that they might derail, and

mishaps had taken place in the past. So, some of the engineers and technicians got together and invented

a speed-controller-gadget that would automatically cut off the power supply when the speed limit crosses

the 15 kph.

More interestingly, there is a possibility that when the engine travels over a down gradient slope, the

speed cannot to be controlled, and even after the power supply is cut off automatically, the engine could

still travel at a speed of more than 15 kph because of the accompanying impact. In such an event, the

formation brakes would be automatically activated to control the speed. For instance, should the engine

happen to travel at speed of 17 kph on a downward slope, the formation brakes would be activated, and

when the speed is brought down to below 15 kph, the application of the brake would be automatically

deactivated. In the final analysis, the new invention would see to it that the engine never travels at a

speed of more than 15 kph, and thus ensuring the safety of the engines from derailing at any point of

time.

Gloating over the new invention, on the Ruby Jubilee (40 years) day, the DRM announced a "substantial

prize " to the team, and they would be duly honoured in a future function, so that more and more

engineers wereand technicians encouraged to come out with more

inventions. There is no need for patenting the gadget, since the loco shed engines are the monopoly of

the railways and it cannot be used in any other area of operation, said the DRM. A delighted DRM also

announced a number of welfare schemes to the 720 workforce including computer literacy to all of them,

vocational guidance to the wards of the workers, and the construction of a eco park for their exclusive

use.

Amazing facts about Indian Railway

If Indian Railways is what interests you then you definitely need to go through some of the interesting facts about one of the largest rail networks in the world:

Indian Railways owns the longest railway platform in the world at Kharagpur with a length of 2,733 ft in length.

Toilets made an introduction in the trains only in 1891 in the first class and took another sixteen years to reach the low class compartments.

The railway station with the longest name is Sri Venkatanarasimharajuvariapeta in TamilNadu and the shortest station name is Ib in Orissa.

The Indian railways still has the oldest preserved locomotive in working order, the Fairy Queen which was made way back in 1855.

Its longest railway bridge stands at a length of 10044 ft on the Sone River and is named as Nehru Setu.

The first electric train ran between Bombay VT and Kurla in the year 1925.

At present the fastest train in the country is the Bhopal Shatabdi which runs at a maximum speed of 140 km/hr.

The longest distance covered by a single train in the country is Himsagar Express that covers a distance of 3,751 km between Jammu Tawi and Kanyakumari.

It is also one of the largest employer in the country having a headcount of 1.6 million employees.

The longest tunnel is Konkan Railways with a length of 6.5 km

The only rack and pinion system in the country is from Mettupalayam to Conoor.

The Howrah-Amritsar Express has maximum number of halts standing at 115

The Indian Railways has a network of 62,000 km on track

The first railway tunnel of the country is Parsik Tunnel

Indian Railways is spread across length and breadth of the entire country covering a total of 39, 233 miles and in terms of infrastructure operates more than 14,444 trains backed by 7,739 locomotives and 39,263 coaches. The longest train journey that you can experience on Indian Railways is the HimSagar Express that runs between Jammu Tawi and KanyaKumari covering a whopping distance of 4,751 km within a time period of 66 hours. To its credit it even has the longest platform in the world at Kharagpur measuring 2,733 ft in length. Also in case you are looking forward to revisit the British Raj era then you should definitely travel on the Fairy Queen that was started more than hundred years ago in 1855. Hopefully you would have a good time traveling on the Indian Railways.