Intriguing Facts about Indian Railways
21 November 2016
Trains have been an essential part of Indian lives, but very less people are aware of all the amazing facts it encompasses. Check out our list comprising some of the interesting facts about Indian Railways you never knew.
1. The longest distance covered by a train is about 4273 km between Dibrugarh and Kanyakumari : called the Vivek Express.
2. The website of Railway gets around 12 lakh hits per minute making it one of the most popular Indian websites.
(IRCTC's hourly traffic is more than the annual traffic of some of the famous Indian websites)
3. Indian railways transport almost 2.5 crore passengers daily (that's the entire population of Australia)
4. The Railways got its toilets when the it has completed about 50 years.
(Thanks to a passenger named Okhil Chandra Sen, who wrote an angry letter to a railway office in 1909 complaining about their absence. Passengers have to wait for the next station to come to attend the call of nature.)
5. its 161 years old
(Indian Railways came into existence on 16th April 1853)
6. The station with the longest name is Venkatanarasimharajuvaripeta.
7. The station with the smallest name is 'IB'
Situated in Odisha, this station has the smallest name.
8. The slowest train of Indian Railways runs with a speed of 10 kilometers per hour
(It is Mettupalayam Ooty Nilgiri passenger which climbs up on the hill with that speed. One can easily jump off and climb on the train again)
9. The New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi is the fastest train on the Indian Railways network
(Touching the maximum speed of 150 kmph on the Faridabad-Agra section)
10. The Guwahati Thiruvananthapuram Express holds the record for being the most unreliable long-distance train on the Indian Railways network.
(The train gets delayed on an average by 10-12 hours)
11. The popular 'toy train' of Darjeeling, which is still running on its own indigenous steam engine, was built in the year 1881 by the India's British colonial master.
12. Indian Railway is constructing the highest rail bridge over Chenab in Jammu and Kashmir.(Five times higher than Qutab Minar and way taller than the Eiffel tower)
13. The shortest distance covered between two stations is 3 kilometers (Between Nagpur and Ajni station)
14. The Railway Station of Navapur is built in two states; half in Maharshtra and the rest is in Gujarat.
15. Loco-pilots (Train drivers) have salaries more than an average software engineer.
16. Trivandrum – H. Nizamuddin is the longest running train covering the distance of 528 km without a single stop.
17. Railway of India, has a mascot- Bholu, The guard elephant.
18. Srirampur and Belapur are the two separate stations of Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra. Both the stations are located at the same point of one railway route, just one opposite to another.
