There was a time when a man traveled by foot and then the wheel was invented and we know what revolution it caused. Today, we have a lot of travelling methods that has brought a lot of convenience to our lives. No part of the world is inaccessible anymore.
Even in our country, people have the benefit of all types of conveyance options. But in today’s topic we are going to be mainly talking about railways. The Indian railways have a major significance in our lives and mainly because it is the most accessible and widely spread transport all across our country. Here are a few facts that one must know about the Indian railways:
- The railways were introduced in India in the year 1853 from Mumbai (Bori Bunder) to Thane in a 14 carriage long train drawn by 3 locomotives named Sultan, Sindh and Sahib.
- Today most of the Indian trains have a pantry car in it. The pantry car gives the option of food on train for all the passengers making their travel much more convenient and comfortable.
- The fastest running train in our country is the New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabadi Express that runs at an average speed of 91 kmph and touches a top speed of 150 kmph on the 195 km Delhi-Agra stretch.
- The longest route undertaken by the railways in our country is by The Vivek Express that runs from Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari making total distance coverage of 4,273 kms.
- The shortest route covered byt he Indian railways is a distance of 3km. The train runs from Nagpur to Ajni. This proves to be helpful for the crew to travel from Nagpur to the workshop at Ajni.
- The longest non-stop railway run is between Vadodara and Kota covered by the Trivandrum City of Kerala – Nizamuddin Rajdhani Express where as the Howrah-Amristsar Express has the maximum number of halts at 115.
- The loco-pilots i.e., the trains drivers are paid much more than an average software engineer where salaries range from Rs 1,00,000 per month and more.
- One would be surprised to know that the Indian railways websites gets 12 lakhs hit per minute at an average. The hourly traffic on IRCTC.com is much more than annual traffic of some of the most popular Indian websites.
- The Indian railway is constructing the highest rail bridge over the river Chenab and Jammu & Kashmir. The estimates height is supposed to be five times the height of Qutub Minar, it is supposedly going to be taller than the Eiffel tower.
- When the Indian railways started, they did not have the toilet system right from the start. They were introduced after the completion of 50 years of Indian railways and one has to thank Okhil Chandra. But before the toilets were introduced, passengers had to wait for the next station.
We use the railways so much for our convenience but how much do we actually know about it. This article will give you some insight.