Indian Railways

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Indian Railways

Posted On : Jun-28-2011 | seen (912) times | Article Word Count : 594 |

In India there are about 36,500 route miles of railways. That’s only a little bit less than in Canada, or in all of Africa combined; 40% more than in Australia and three times British Railways' tracks. They carry more ton-kilometers of goods than the railways of any country except the USA, USSR, Canada or China and more passenger kilometers than any country apart from the USSR and Japan. To reach this place in the United Nations League-chart the Indian Railways carry about six million passengers a day - that is, at any moment there are likely to be perhaps half a million people standing, sitting or lying in the trains of India. And this calculation omits those who are in the trains without paying their fares, a considerable number of people well warranting the special appeal printed on the back cover of every issue of the All India timetables: a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and requests to passengers willingly to pay their fares due and “to help us stop ticketless travel”.
Any railway which continuously sticks away something like one-sixth the population of New Zealand at all times in its carriages is no small system, and the Indian Railways are forbidding. Serving a sub-continent, they are American in their distances without being American in their speeds – or in their fares. It takes four days and four nights, by the fastest expresses, to travel the hypotenuse of this triangular country – and costs but little more than ten dollars.
Railways, beginning as a British export, changed rapidly when sent to North America and Continental Europe. The Independent British colonies (S. Africa, Australia and the rest) were also not long in discovering that they could reduce costs by resort to North American practices. By the early twentieth century some of the lines run by expatriate Englishmen, especially in Africa, were doing likewise. But not in India; here the dignity and standards of the Raj had to be maintained. Only two major concessions were made: one, early on, was to switch from double tracks to single; the other, to adopt the meter and then narrow gauge, which were thought to conserve capital without lowering standards. It would have been better for the economic development of India had the railways been cheaply built and the money saved used to promote industry – even just those industries serving the railways themselves, for up to Independence the greater part of the railway plant was imported. But no, the railways were to be the monument of the Trader’s Raj; impressive with their fine terminals and well-built track. Reclining on his sleeping berth in his reserved compartment, the Trader could feel he had conquered and impressed; great was the Raj and excellent were its railways.
Traces of the grandeur remain, even now that a third class annexed has been added to station after station, and the tracks swarm with third class carriages, even to whole trains. But there have been conscious attempts to jump the British tradition: in locomotives, the new India standardized domestic production on rather North American bar-framed designs, and produced them in such quantity that the prospect of standard, unvarying steam power which so perturbed English railway writers in the early 1950’s, has actually come to pass. And the diesels that are coming are emphatically American, while the electric engines are Continental-International. Yet under the rolling stock, with the high proportion of four-wheel vans, the vacuum brake sighs even yet, while in the cab of express and local train alike there will likely be a Neale’s token.

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<h1>Indian Railways</h1> Author: <a href='http://www.articleseen.com/profile_faishal.aspx'>faishal</a> In India there are about 36,500 route miles of railways. That’s only a little bit less than in Canada, or in all of Africa combined; 40% more than in Australia and three times British Railways' tracks. They carry more ton-kilometers of goods than the railways of any country except the USA, USSR, Canada or China and more passenger kilometers than any country apart from the USSR and Japan. To reach this place in the United Nations League-chart the Indian Railways carry about six million passengers a day - that is, at any moment there are likely to be perhaps half a million people standing, sitting or lying in the trains of India. And this calculation omits those who are in the trains without paying their fares, a considerable number of people well warranting the special appeal printed on the back cover of every issue of the All India timetables: a picture of Mahatma Gandhi and requests to passengers willingly to pay their fares due and “to help us stop ticketless travel”.
Any railway which continuously sticks away something like one-sixth the population of New Zealand at all times in its carriages is no small system, and the Indian Railways are forbidding. Serving a sub-continent, they are American in their distances without being American in their speeds – or in their fares. It takes four days and four nights, by the fastest expresses, to travel the hypotenuse of this triangular country – and costs but little more than ten dollars.
Railways, beginning as a British export, changed rapidly when sent to North America and Continental Europe. The Independent British colonies (S. Africa, Australia and the rest) were also not long in discovering that they could reduce costs by resort to North American practices. By the early twentieth century some of the lines run by expatriate Englishmen, especially in Africa, were doing likewise. But not in India; here the dignity and standards of the Raj had to be maintained. Only two major concessions were made: one, early on, was to switch from double tracks to single; the other, to adopt the meter and then narrow gauge, which were thought to conserve capital without lowering standards. It would have been better for the economic development of India had the railways been cheaply built and the money saved used to promote industry – even just those industries serving the railways themselves, for up to Independence the greater part of the railway plant was imported. But no, the railways were to be the monument of the Trader’s Raj; impressive with their fine terminals and well-built track. Reclining on his sleeping berth in his reserved compartment, the Trader could feel he had conquered and impressed; great was the Raj and excellent were its railways.
Traces of the grandeur remain, even now that a third class annexed has been added to station after station, and the tracks swarm with third class carriages, even to whole trains. But there have been conscious attempts to jump the British tradition: in locomotives, the new India standardized domestic production on rather North American bar-framed designs, and produced them in such quantity that the prospect of standard, unvarying steam power which so perturbed English railway writers in the early 1950’s, has actually come to pass. And the diesels that are coming are emphatically American, while the electric engines are Continental-International. Yet under the rolling stock, with the high proportion of four-wheel vans, the vacuum brake sighs even yet, while in the cab of express and local train alike there will likely be a Neale’s token.
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