Indian Railways is one of the largest railways networks in the world and the largest railways network to be operated by a single Govt.. It has been in operation for nearly 170 years, since April 16, 1853.
The first electric train ran between Bombay VT and Kurla in the year 1925.
Indian Railways owns the longest railway platform in the world at Kharagpur with a length of 2,733 ft in length.
Indian railways still has the oldest preserved locomotive in working order, the Fairy Queen which was made way back in 1855. It is the oldest functioning steam engine in the world, which finds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records and got Heritage Award at the International Tourist Bureau, Berlin in March, 2000.
On operational front, Delhi Main station entered the Guinness Book for having the world’s largest route relay interlocking system.
Darjeeling Himalayan Railways attained the World Heritage Status from UNESCO.
Luxury Trains
Lounge, Palace on wheels-
Peacock Restaurant, Maharaja Express
Conference coach, Deccan Odyssey
Twin bed deluxe cabin, The Golden Chariot
Trains:
Stations:
Future:
The first railway on Indian sub-continent ran over a stretch of 21 miles from Bombay to Thane. The idea of a railway to connect Bombay with Thane, Kalyan and with the Thal and Bhore Ghats inclines first occurred to Mr. George Clark, the Chief Engineer of the Bombay Government, during a visit to Bhandup in 1843.
The formal inauguration ceremony was performed on 16th April 1853, when 14 railway carriages carrying about 400 guests left Bori Bunder at 3.30 pm "amidst the loud applause of a vast multitude and to the salute of 21 guns." The first passenger train steamed out of Howrah station destined for Hooghly, a distance of 24 miles, on 15th August, 1854. Thus the first section of the East Indian Railway was opened to public traffic, inaugurating the beginning of railway transport on the Eastern side of the subcontinent.
In south the first line was opened on Ist July, 1856 by the Madras Railway Company. It ran between Vyasarpadi Jeeva Nilayam (Veyasarpandy) and Walajah Road (Arcot), a distance of 63 miles. In the North a length of 119 miles of line was laid from Allahabad to Kanpur on 3rd March 1859. The first section from Hathras Road to Mathura Cantonment was opened to traffic on 19th October, 1875.
The first electric train ran between Bombay VT and Kurla in the year 1925.
Indian Railways owns the longest railway platform in the world at Kharagpur with a length of 2,733 ft in length.
Indian railways still has the oldest preserved locomotive in working order, the Fairy Queen which was made way back in 1855. It is the oldest functioning steam engine in the world, which finds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records and got Heritage Award at the International Tourist Bureau, Berlin in March, 2000.
On operational front, Delhi Main station entered the Guinness Book for having the world’s largest route relay interlocking system.
Darjeeling Himalayan Railways attained the World Heritage Status from UNESCO.
Luxury Trains
Luxury rail journeys have come a long way in India since the introduction of Palace on Wheels train in 1982. Nowadays, there are an array of luxurious tourist trains offering extravagant journeys across select destinations and regions for enchanting Indian holidays. Train tours offered by Maharajas Express, the Indian Maharaja, Deccan Odyssey and the Golden Chariot are the talk of luxury travel circuits around the world.
Lounge, Palace on wheels-
Peacock Restaurant, Maharaja Express
Conference coach, Deccan Odyssey
Twin bed deluxe cabin, The Golden Chariot
Trains:
- Fastest: New Delhi-BhopalShatabdi Express clocks a maximum speed of 150km/h on the Faridabad-Agra section. Covers the whole route in less than 8 hrs.
- Slowest: Metupalayam Ooty Nilgiri Passenger which runs at a speed of 10kmph, 15 times lower than fastest running train. But since this train runs in hilly region there are speed limits to comply. The one that comes close is Pratapnagar-Jambusar passenger, with a maximum speed of 12km/h and an average speed of 11km/h. It takes 4 hrs for a journey of 44 km.
- Least punctual: Guwahati-Trivandrum Express with an average delay on a trip of approximately 11 hrs.
- Longest run: Vibek Express(Kanyakumari-Dibru
garh) with approx. 83 hrs is the longest run(time) by a train. Kerala Express travels 3054km in 42.5 hrs making it the longest running train in a day.
Himsagar Express covers a distance of 3,751 km between Jammu Tawi and Kanyakumari. - Shortest run: From Nagpur to Ajni (2.8km), introduced for crew to travel from Nagpur to Workshop in Ajni.
- Highest number of Stops: Howrah-Amritsar Express with 115 halts has the largest number of stops for an Express train. Trivandrum-H. Nizamuddin Rajdhani express runs the longest stretch (Kota to Vadodara, 528 Km) without any stops.
Stations:
- Longest and shortest station names: Ib in Jharsuguda, Odisha and Sri Venkatanarasimharajuvarii
peta near Chennai. - Stations at the extremes: Northernmost railway station is Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir. Westernmost is Naliya near Bhuj in Gujarat. Southernmost railway station is Kanyakumari, while the last station on the east of India is Ledo on branch line from Tinsukia.
- Stations at state boundaries: Navapur (Maharashtra and Gujarat), Bhawani Mandi (Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan)
- Two stations at same location:Srirampur and Belapur are two different stations in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra which are both at the same location on the railway route but on opposite sides of the track.
- Busiest station: Lucknow, with 64 trains per day.
- Junction with Maximum routes: Mathura junction with 7 routes- Broad Gauge (BG) line to Agra Cantt, BG line to Bharatpur, BG line to Alwar, BG line to Delhi, Metre Gauge (MG) line to Achnera, MG line to Vrindavan and MG line to Hathras, Kasganj.
- Three Gauges: Siliguri is a station that has all three gauges (Broad gauge, Meter gauge and Narrow gauge) lines present.
Future:
- To give improved telecommunication systems on Railways, Optical Fibre based communication systems has been adopted and laying OFC has increased to 7,700 route kilometer this year. Rail Tel Corporation has been created to make a nationwide broadband multimedia network by laying optical fibre cable along the railway tracks.
- Anti Collision Device (ACD), state-of-art indigenous technology of Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC) is currently under-going intensive field trials and is capable of avoiding collision between trains.
- Sky bus metro is another innovative, economic and eco-friendly mass rapid transportation solution devised by Konkan Railway.
- Self Stablising Track (SST) devised by KRC, which is undergoing trials at present, will help Railways run the fastest train in the near future and will make tracks much more safe and sustainable.
- Maglev proposals: Govt. of India is currently in the process of reviewing a proposal to start a Maglev train system in India. It has already been estimated that the cost to complete this process would be over $30 Billion.
Proposals: Mumbai to Pune,which will take 30 minutes along the 200 km stretch. Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Nagpur, Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore are also proposed to have Maglev services.
Classification of Indian Locomotives
You should have seen the letters WDP-3A ,WDM-3F or some thing like this painted on the front and sides of an engine,but have you guys ever wondered what these letters stand for?
Well,these letters are used to classify these locos according to their track gauge,the motive power,the work they are suited for and their power or model number.
The first letter (gauge)
A locomotive may sometimes have a fifth letter in its name which generally denotes a technical variant or subclass or subtype. This fifth letter indicates some smaller variation in the basic model or series, perhaps different motors, or a different manufacturer. With the new scheme for classifying diesel locomotives (as mentioned above) the fifth item is a letter that further refines the horsepower indication in 100 hp increments: 'A' for 100 hp, 'B' for 200 hp, 'C' for 300 hp, etc. So in this scheme, a WDP-3A refers to a 3100 hp loco, while a WDM-3F would be a 3600 hp loco.
You should have seen the letters WDP-3A ,WDM-3F or some thing like this painted on the front and sides of an engine,but have you guys ever wondered what these letters stand for?
Well,these letters are used to classify these locos according to their track gauge,the motive power,the work they are suited for and their power or model number.
The first letter (gauge)
- W – Indian broad gauge (the "W" Stands for Wide Gauge - 5 ft 6 in)
- Y – metre gauge (the "Y" stands for Yard Gauge - 3 ft or 1000mm)
- Z – narrow gauge(2 ft 6 in)
- N – narrow gauge (toy gauge) (2 ft)
- D – diesel
- C – DC electric (can run under DC overhead line only)
- A – AC electric (can run under AC overhead line only)
- CA – both DC and AC (can run under both AC and DC overhead line); 'CA' is considered a single letter
- B – Battery electric locomotive (rare)
- G – goods
- P – passenger
- M – mixed; both goods and passenger
- S – shunting (also known as switching engines or switchers in the USA and some other countries)
- U – electric multiple unit (used to carry commuters in city suburbs)
- R – Railcar
- For example, in "WDM 3A":
- "W" means broad gauge
- "D" means diesel motive power
- "M" means suitable for both goods and passenger service
- "3A" means the locomotive's power is 3,100 hp ('3' stands for 3000 hp, 'A' denotes 100 hp more)
- "W" means broad gauge
- "A" mean AC electric traction motive power
- "P" means suitable for Passenger service
- "5" denotes that this locomotive is chronologically the fifth electric locomotive model used by the railways for passenger service
A locomotive may sometimes have a fifth letter in its name which generally denotes a technical variant or subclass or subtype. This fifth letter indicates some smaller variation in the basic model or series, perhaps different motors, or a different manufacturer. With the new scheme for classifying diesel locomotives (as mentioned above) the fifth item is a letter that further refines the horsepower indication in 100 hp increments: 'A' for 100 hp, 'B' for 200 hp, 'C' for 300 hp, etc. So in this scheme, a WDP-3A refers to a 3100 hp loco, while a WDM-3F would be a 3600 hp loco.
Whilst travelling by train, I decided to charge my phone at one of the power sockets provided in the railway coach. As the journey was long, the phone battery wouldn't have survived all throughout the travel, moreover because the railway route was full of patchy mobile signal. During the time when it was connected to the power supply, I noticed that I was not able to use the touch screen. I tried hard to swipe my finger to unlock the phone, all in vain. I guess, most of you have experienced it.
So, when I gave up trying to operate it, I observed things moving on their own on the screen, I could see the camera starting automatically. And when I just unplugged the charger cable, everything was back to normal.
Actually, Capacitive touch screens use a layer of capacitive material to hold an electrical charge; touching the screen with your finger changes the amount of charge at that specific point of contact. But, capacitive touch screens won't work if you are wearing gloves or if you try to operate it using any other insulating material. Also, an important requirement is proper grounding for the touch screen sensors to sense the variations in the capacitance along the screen.
Now, if you use a power socket, which is not properly grounded, to charge your device, you can very well expect the touch screen to behave funny. This would happen very often in the power sockets provided in the Indian Railways' coaches. Also, it's very much possible with a Car charger, since both these places would most of the time not be grounded properly.
Specially operating the touch screen whilst charging in railway coaches or cars could make it behave funny if the electrical system is not grounded correctly. The change in behaviour of the touch screen should not be permanent, it will come back to normal once you unplug it from the power socket.
Sometimes, you might get a tingling sensation in your finger when you try to operate these touch screens at such places. While under normal operation of a capacitive touch screen, your finger collects some static from the screen, the effect is even more while charging the devices at places without proper grounding. Again, this disappears the moment you unplug your device from the power socket.
Source- Internet
So, when I gave up trying to operate it, I observed things moving on their own on the screen, I could see the camera starting automatically. And when I just unplugged the charger cable, everything was back to normal.
Actually, Capacitive touch screens use a layer of capacitive material to hold an electrical charge; touching the screen with your finger changes the amount of charge at that specific point of contact. But, capacitive touch screens won't work if you are wearing gloves or if you try to operate it using any other insulating material. Also, an important requirement is proper grounding for the touch screen sensors to sense the variations in the capacitance along the screen.
Now, if you use a power socket, which is not properly grounded, to charge your device, you can very well expect the touch screen to behave funny. This would happen very often in the power sockets provided in the Indian Railways' coaches. Also, it's very much possible with a Car charger, since both these places would most of the time not be grounded properly.
Specially operating the touch screen whilst charging in railway coaches or cars could make it behave funny if the electrical system is not grounded correctly. The change in behaviour of the touch screen should not be permanent, it will come back to normal once you unplug it from the power socket.
Sometimes, you might get a tingling sensation in your finger when you try to operate these touch screens at such places. While under normal operation of a capacitive touch screen, your finger collects some static from the screen, the effect is even more while charging the devices at places without proper grounding. Again, this disappears the moment you unplug your device from the power socket.
Source- Internet
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