Indian Railways (
reporting mark IR / भा. रे) is an Indian
state-owned enterprise, owned and operated by the
Government of Indiathrough the
Ministry of Railways. It is one of the world's largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km (71,000 mi) of track over a route of 65,436 km (40,660 mi) and 7,172 stations. In 2013-14, IR carried 8,425 million passengers annually or more than 23 million passengers daily (roughly half of which were suburban passengers) and 1050.18 million tons of freight in the year. In 2013–2014 Indian Railways had revenues of
1441.67 billion (US$23 billion) which consists of
375.0 billion (US$6.1 billion) from freight and
940.0 billion (US$15 billion) from passengers tickets.
[2]
Indian Railways is the world's
ninth largest commercial or utility employer, by number of employees, with over 1.307 million employees. As for
rolling stock, IR holds over 239,281
Freight Wagons, 62,924
Passenger Coaches and 9,013
Locomotives (43 steam, 5,345 diesel and 4,568 electric locomotives).
[6] The trains have a 5 digit numbering system and runs 12,617 passenger trains and 7421 freight trains daily.
[7] As of 31 March 2013, 20,884 km (12,977 mi) (31.9%) of the total 65,436 km (40,660 mi) route length was electrified.
[8] Since 1960, almost all electrified sections on IR use 25,000 Volt AC traction through overhead catenary delivery.
On 23 April 2014, Indian Railways introduced a mobile app system to track train schedules.
