The Indian Railways is a colossus. It is the world’s largest railway system under a single management and is unparalleled in size, scale and operations, which give rise to some really mind-blowing numbers. Here are some interesting and amazing facts, figures and statistics about the Indian Railways.
All data is as of March 31 2013 unless otherwise mentioned.
Total Route Trackage: 65,436 km (BG: 57149, MG: 5999, NG: 2297)
Actual end-to-end line routedistances, disregarding double lines, station lines, loops etc.
Total Train Running Trackage Including Double/Multiple Lines: 89,236 km
Total Rail Trackage (Length of Every bit of Rail Track in India): 115,883 km
Total length of all rail tracks in India including loops, sidings, station lines, pit lines etc.
Total Electrified Route Trackage (including all Gauges): 20,884 km
Total Number of Railway Stations including all types and closed: 7589
Total Distance Traveled by all Indian Railways trains in a year: 1.1 billion (110 crore) kilometers. Passenger: 701.6 million km; Freight: 401.3 million km.
Indian Railways Trains cover the distance from Earth to Saturn every year.
Total distance covered by all trains (passenger+freight) on any single day in India on an average: 3 million/ 30 lakh kilometers, 10 times the distance to the moon! In the time you took to read this article trains in India would’ve traveled another 12,500 km or the distance from Mumbai to New York.
Total Freight carried by Indian Railways: 1 Billion Tonnes; Half of which is Coal.
Total Number of Trains run every day: Goods 7421 | Passenger 12617
Average distance covered by one Engine (Locomotive) a day: 559.25 km
Local Train (Suburban) passengers carried per day: 11,126,027 (1.1 crore)
Total distance traveled by Indians in their trains in a year: 1 Trillion kilometers
Indian Railways carries 23 million passengers daily and 8.421 billion annually.
Indian Railways transport the equivalent of the entire population of Australia every day and more than the entire population of The World every year.
Passenger-kilometers of Indian Railways are more than that of all services of the top-three airline companies in the world (American, United, Delta) put together.
At any given time, 5% of India’s population are on the move on its trains.
On an average 20038 trains are on the run in India at any given moment!
On an average a train runs 63 km on a day for every running track kilometer that exists.
On an average a passenger travels 19 km a day for every existing route track kilometer.
Average speed of Express trains including halts: 50 kph
There are 25 trains with average speeds of more than 80 kph.
Number of types of train: 12 (Duro, Raj, Shd, JS, GR, DD, Yuva, Prem, SF, M/E, Pass, xMU)
Number of classes of Accommodation: 10 (1AC, 2AC, 3AC, 3AE, EC, CC, FC, SL, 2S, II-UR)
Number of trains for which reservation is available: 3000 (approx)
Number of Timetabled Trains by Type/Class (as of Feb 01 2015):
Rajdhanis 44 | Durontos 54 | Shatabdis 48 | Jan-Shatabdis 40 | Garibraths 54 | Premium 18 | Sampark Krantis 47 | AC Double Deckers 16 | Superfast Mail/Express 879 | Mail/Express 1578 | Passenger 2522 | MEMU/DEMU 1311
Local EMU Trains: Delhi 120 | Kolkata 1493 | Mumbai 2788 | Chennai 896 | Hyderabad 123
Total No of Timetabled Passenger Carrying Trains (non-EMU) 6611 (all types) 12031
Total Number of Passenger Coaches of all types: 63,870 | EMU/MEMU/DMU: 8238
Total seating capacity of the Indian Railways: 5.06 million
The total population of Finland or Singapore can be easily seated inside all of Indian Trains
Total Number of Electric Locomotives: 5006
WAM4 216 | WAP1 64 | WAP4 729 | WAP5 81 | WAP7 208 | WAG5 1159 | WAG6 13 | WAG7 1909 | WAG9 537 | WCAM1 3 | WCAM2 20 | WCAM3 53 | WCAG1 12 | WCM6 2
Biggest electric loco sheds: Vijayawada (SCR) and Bhilai (SECR) with 211 locos each
Total Number of Diesel Locomotives: 4990
WDM2 584 | WDM3A 1267 | WDM3D 488 | WDP1 63 | WDP3A 40 | WDG3A 1146 | WDP4 315 | WDG4 1087
Biggest Diesel Loco Shed: Visakhapatnam (ECoR) with 217 locos.
All locomotive data is as of February 01 2015
Total Power output of all Locomotives in India: 36,641,594 hp or 27.323 GigaWatts
Equivalent to the peak power output of 195 Boeing 747s or three times the power output of the world’s largest electrical power plant or twice the power produced during a space shuttle liftoff or half the peak daily average electrical power consumption of Great Britain.
Total number of freight wagons: 244,731
Total carrying capacity of all freight wagons put together: 13.44 million tonnes
Indian Railways owns 4550 sq km of land, 20% more than the area of the state of Goa
Indian Railways employs 13,07,000 people, or 1 out every 1000 people in India 🙂
Passenger numbers for a class and their contributions to total revenue earnings are inversely proportional.
AC class passengers constitute only 1.5% of all passengers but contribute 28.95% of total passenger revenue.
More than half of Indian Railways’ passengers (53.16%) are Suburban commuters. But the Indian Railways earns just 6.42% of its passenger revenue from this large bulk.
Second (including Sleeper) Class contribute half of IR’s Passengers and Revenue
Average diesel consumption of Indian Railway locomotives for a day is around 7.4 million liters, or about how much beer the Germans drink in a month 🙂
The Indian Railways is probably the cheapest mode of motorized long-distance travel in the world, a passenger paying only 28.5 paise (0.005 cents) to travel a kilometer on average.
An accident (of any type, including minor ones) occurs every 10 million (1 crore) km of train run.
Total Revenue of the Indian Railways: INR 1,23,732.59 crore/1.24 trillion (USD 20 billion) Passenger Business: INR 32,311,64 Cr, Freight: INR 70.231.57 Cr.
Fastest Train on the Indian Railways Network: 12951/2 Mumbai “The King” Rajdhani (1386 km 16 hrs 86 kph)
Longest distance running train: 15906/5 Dibrugarh-Kanyakumari Vivek Express (4236 km | 3d10h | 51 kph)
Longest distance running daily train: 15909/10 New Tinsukia-Lalgarh Avadh Assam Express (3072 km | 2d19h | 45 kph) (also holds the record for the longest run by a single diesel locomotive SGUJ WDP4)
Longest distance running daily SF: 12625/6 Trivandrum-New Delhi Kerala Express (3034 km | 2d2h30m | 60 kph) (also holds the record for the longest run by a single electric locomotive 12626 NDLS-ERS ED WAP4)
Longest North-South distance running train: 16317/8 Kanyakumari-Jammu Tawi Himsagar Express (3711 km)
Longest East-West distance running train: 15636/5 Guwahati-Okha Dwarka Express (3217 km)
The 18695 Islampur-Patna RJNR Express is the slowest express train in India discounting slip trains, taking 2 hours 30 min to cover its 62 km at an average speed of 24 kph.
Train with the most number of stoppages: 13131/13132 Kolkata HWH-Delhi ANVT Express with 122 halts or a stop every 12 km. This is also the most “late” train on Indian Railways, arriving 6-8 hours late at either destination on an average every day. The GHY-TVC Express runs more or less on time these days.
The 13134 Upper India Express has 82 stops or a halt every 10 km on its 871 km route between Varanasi and Kolkata SDAH, making it the long-distance train with the most frequent stoppages.
Oldest Train Still Running: The Chennai-Bangalore Mail started running in 1864. Its name, route, termini and timings (mostly) have not changed since then.
Zone with highest absolute earnings: Northern Railway (123.27 mn)
Zone with highest earnings from Passenger Business per track kilometer: North Central Railway NCR (5.4 mn/km)
Zone with highest earnings from highest earnings from Freight Loading and overall business per track kilometer: Eastern Coastal Railway ECoR (18.1 mn/km, 20.1 mn/km)
State with highest per capita rail route km: Andhra Pradesh* (0.1 metre/person)
State with lowest per capita rail route km: Kerala (0.03 metre/person)
State with highest rail density: West Bengal (0.11 metres of rail track/sq km)
State with lowest rail density : Chattisgarh (0.01 metres of rail track/sq km)
* includes Telangana | All these data are considering states with >500 km route track only
Let us also remember our humongous and extremely complex (fully computerized) reservation system. It handles real-time reservation for 3000 trains of 12 types in 9 different classes among 70 different quotas for 60 days through 10000+ PRS counters, tens of thousands of agents, quite a number of agent websites, the IRCTC portal and Android and Windows apps, all in Real Time. Beat that!