Indian Railways, national transporter of India, manages the fourth largest railway network in the world by size, with a route length of over 67000 kilometer and total track length of over 120, 000 kilometer. The First train on Indian soil ran between Bombay and Thane on the 16th of April 1853 with a steam engine. Today all major routes are electrified with 25 kV AC electric traction while 33% of them are double or multi-tracked.
Indian Railway runs more than 20,000 passenger trains daily carrying about 25 million passengers, on both long-distance and suburban routes, from 7,349 stations across India. In the freight segment, IR runs more than 9,200 trains daily carrying over 1200 million tonne of goods annually.
It has a population of 145,000 bridges, over 280,000 freight wagons, 71,000 passenger coaches and 11,500 locomotives. IR is the world's eighth-largest employer, it had 1.308 million employees as of March 2017.
On the Signaling and Telecom side, it has 4150 stations with panel interlocking, 1140 electronic interlocking and 280 nos. with route relay interlocking, having an OFC network of over 51,000 kms.
Indian Railways support passenger train speed upto 160 kmph (Design speed of 180 kmph) and freight speed upto 100 kmph. IR has ambitious plan to run most of her passenger trains at 160 kmph and freight at 100 kmph for which required initiatives have already been taken.
