INDIAN RAILWAYS AND THE MAHARAJAS' EXPRESS TRAINS

OF TRAINS AND REJUVENATING TRAVEL EXPERIENCES

- RAVI VALLURI

There is a well-used adage: "If wishes were horses, men would fly." Maybe it's a voguish predisposition of humans to transcend mountains, skies and water bodies like the avian species. Humans, through the innovative ability and ingenuity of the Wright brothers, realised the cherished dream of being airborne.

Rewind to April 16, 1853 - a truly momentous day when iron trudged on iron. It appeared eons ago. Yes, 171 years to be precise. This was the day when Sahib, Sindh and Sultan, three robust steam engines hauled 14 carriages on a broad-gauge track over 34 kilometres. This historic journey took place between Boribunder (in present-day Mumbai) and Thane.

Today Indian Railways (IR) operates around 25,000 trains daily to move approximately four million tonnes of freight cargo and more than 23 million passengers - no mean achievement! IR has become a crucial driver of the Indian economy. To run these trains, passengers and freight, the organisation has a gargantuan fleet of resources. At the apex level, the organisation is headed by the Railway Board, which is further segregated into 17 Zonal Railways, 67 Divisional offices and several production units. The apparently monolithic organisation has an assemblage of 10,000 locomotives, 58,000 coaches with an aggregate seating capacity of 50 lakhs, 2.5 lakh wagons with aggregated freight carrying capacity of 13.5 million tonnes and about 68,103 route kilometres of the network (as of March 2022).