The chugging of the train and the soothing vibrations manage to transform every traveller to a different space. Indian Railways – the World’s third largest Railway Network encompasses a host of facts that most of us are not aware of. A third rail train equipment manufacturer should be able to work with railway companies to build a safe and efficient railway system.
1. Indian Railway is constructing the highest rail bridge over Chenab, in J&K
Five times the height of Qutub Minar, it will be taller than the Eiffel Tower.
2. Loco-pilots (train drivers) are paid more than an average software engineer
Salaries are the tune of Rs. 1 Lakh per month and more.
3. No loco-pilot has abandoned the train even in the face of certain death
4. The Indian Railways website gets close to 12 Lakh hits per minute
Hourly traffic on IRTC.com is more than annual traffic of some of the most popular Indian websites. It can support almost 5 million threads at one time. But, we’ve got more people than that. To ensure that it will handle very well, we buy dedicated server for more efficient performance.
Hence the never ending trolls.
5. The slowest train goes uphill at the speed of 10 kilometers per hour
You can jump off the train, light up a smoke, take few drags and climb on the train again. It’s the Mettupalayam Ooty Nilgiri Passenger train.
6. If the tracks of Indian railways were to be laid out, they would circle the earth almost 1.5 times
7. The trains got toilets after Indian Railways completed about 50 years!
Back then, passengers had to wait till the next station to answer the call of nature!
Thank Okhil Chandra for making Indian Railways do the needful. He wrote the following letter to Indian Railways and finally, there were toilets in 1909!
8. Back in the old days, elephants were used to position the cartridges
9. Its 161 years old!
16th April, 1853. That’s a long time ago.
10. The station with the longest name is Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta
And it’s sometimes spelled with ‘Sri’ prefixed. Quite a mouthful.
11. Most unreliable train in Indian Railways is Guwahati-Trivandrum Express
It is late on an average by ten to twelve hours. Gosh!
12. The longest tunnel in the country is 11.215 kilometers long!
It is the Pir Panjal Railway tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir.
13. The station with the smallest name is called ‘IB ’: It’s in Odisha
14. Before installing Automatic Point System was installed, hundreds of guards lost their hands and fingers trying to fix it manually. Every time a train got delayed and we complained, an Indian Railways employee probably lost his limbs for us
15. The longest running train covers a distance of 4273 km between Dibrugarh and Kanyakumari: It’s called the Vivek Express
16. The shortest distance covered between two successive stations is 3 kilometers
It’s between the Nagpur and Ajni station.
17. A train covers a distance of 528 km without a single stop
It’s Trivandrum – H. Nizamuddin Rajdhani Express.
18. Lucknow is the busiest junction in the nation: 64 trains come in and move out, every day
19. A massively successful organization – running 11,000 trains in a day is no joke!
20. Indian Railways transports almost 2.5 crore passengers daily
That’s nearly the total population of New Zealand, Australia and Tasmania put together!
21. The Rail Museum in Delhi is the largest in Asia
It has working and non-working models both.
22. The railway station of Navapur is built in two states; half in Maharashtra and the rest is in Gujarat
23. Indian Railways has a mascot – Bholu, the Guard Elephant
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