Railways Right Royal

Railways Right Royal  -  P.Natarajan

Indian Railways is considered as the ‘Life Line’ of the country. It is 162 years old, the biggest in Asia and second biggest in the world. 30 million people travel in a day and the freight it carries all through the country is about 2.80 million tonnes daily. The Railway Lines which cover a network of

63000 k.m. through the country exceed the length of Earth’s Equator by 1.50 times and the number of trains running daily is around 11000 which includes a fleet of  7000 Nos. of passenger vehicles.

Vivek Express which run between Kanyakumari and Dibrugarh over a distance of 4286 K.M. in a time span of 83.30 hours is the longest train in India. The Railway Platform 4483 long in Gorakhpur station is the longest one in the world. The station having the longest name exists in South by name ‘VENKATA NARASIMHA RAJA VARI PETA’ and the station with the shortest

name is ‘Ib’ in Orissa.

The tallest Railway bridge which will be 5 times taller than Kudus Minar is

(Howrah Bridge - A Spectacular view in the night )

being built over Chenab river in Himalayas to link sections of spectacular mountain regions in J&K. It is expected to be 39 meters or 1177 feet when completed and 35 meters taller than Eiffel Tower. the present tallest rail Bridge is in china - 275 meters over the river Beipanjiang.

The longest rail bridge is in Kerala connecting Edappally and Vallarpadam in Kochi - 4.62 k.m. open to goods traffic only. Upper Son bridge, also known as Nehru - Setu bridge is second largest 3.06k.m. long is in Bihar over Son river.

Toilet facilities were introduced in 1891 in 1st class and in 1909 in lower class compartments respectively. Computerized railway reservation facility was opened in 1986 in New Delhi.

The biggest Rail Museum in Asia is in New Delhi.

Bholu or Bholu the guard elephant is the mascot of Indian Railways. The mascot, a cartoon of an elephant holding a signal lamp with green light in one hand, was initially designed for Indian Railways' 150th year commemoration events and was unveiled on 16 April 2002 in Bangalore. Later in 2003, Indian Railways decided to permanently retain it as the official mascot.  The icon was placed on the reverse of a coin.

16 lakhs is the work force in Railways which serves 120 crores of people in India.

(The Mascot of Indian Railways is ‘ BHOLA’, the Elephant.)

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