Paul Theroux, author of The Great Railway Bazaar, wrote: "The railway possessed India and made her hugeness graspable." Indeed, when the topic is the Indian Railways, size is invariably an important element in 
that discussion. And why not? Just consider the numbers. The Indian Railways ferries over 18 million passengers and two million tonnes of freight daily. It is the country's single largest employer, with 1.4 million people on its payrolls. It possesses 8,000 locomotives, 200,000 freight wagons and 50,000 passenger coaches - they run over a total route length of 63,000-plus kilometers. It is not without reason that the Indian Railways is often described as "the spine of the elephant that is India". Of course, there is much more to the Indian Railways than mere statistics. Today, those, who can afford, fly around the world in Boeing and Airbus aircraft or zip from place to place in the swankiest of SUVs. But the romance of a train journey hasn't diminished a whit since the time Theroux was growing up in a New England state of the US. "Ever since childhood," he wrote, "I have seldom heard a train and not wished I was on it." Or listen to what Bill Aitken, Scottish by birth, Indian at heart and inveterate railway lover, has to say. It was on a trip from the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad circa 1960 that it dawned on him that "the system created by the mind of George Stephenson does echo a grand design worthy of the Almighty".
A measure of the importance of the Railways is provided by the city Mumbai, which, incidentally, was the place from where Asia's first train steamed off on April 16, 1853, to cover a distance of 34 kilometers to Thane. The suburban railway system is the lifeline of India's commercial capital. When the trains stop because of a natural calamity or man-made obstacles, the city, too, screeches to a halt.
That is true of India as a whole. Without the 9,000 passengers trains that link 7,000 railway stations that make up the network, it would have been well-nigh impossible to grasp the "hugeness of India".
that discussion. And why not? Just consider the numbers. The Indian Railways ferries over 18 million passengers and two million tonnes of freight daily. It is the country's single largest employer, with 1.4 million people on its payrolls. It possesses 8,000 locomotives, 200,000 freight wagons and 50,000 passenger coaches - they run over a total route length of 63,000-plus kilometers. It is not without reason that the Indian Railways is often described as "the spine of the elephant that is India". Of course, there is much more to the Indian Railways than mere statistics. Today, those, who can afford, fly around the world in Boeing and Airbus aircraft or zip from place to place in the swankiest of SUVs. But the romance of a train journey hasn't diminished a whit since the time Theroux was growing up in a New England state of the US. "Ever since childhood," he wrote, "I have seldom heard a train and not wished I was on it." Or listen to what Bill Aitken, Scottish by birth, Indian at heart and inveterate railway lover, has to say. It was on a trip from the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad circa 1960 that it dawned on him that "the system created by the mind of George Stephenson does echo a grand design worthy of the Almighty".A measure of the importance of the Railways is provided by the city Mumbai, which, incidentally, was the place from where Asia's first train steamed off on April 16, 1853, to cover a distance of 34 kilometers to Thane. The suburban railway system is the lifeline of India's commercial capital. When the trains stop because of a natural calamity or man-made obstacles, the city, too, screeches to a halt.
That is true of India as a whole. Without the 9,000 passengers trains that link 7,000 railway stations that make up the network, it would have been well-nigh impossible to grasp the "hugeness of India".
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