India's railway carries almost seven billion passengers a year on 13,000 daily trains
India's first railway, in 1837, hauled granite in Madras. Today the national network runs more than 13,000 passenger trains every day, carried 6.905 billion journeys in a single year, and employs over a million people, putting it among the world's ten largest employers. Nearly all of its broad-gauge track now runs on electricity.
Rail arrived early. A line proposed for Madras in 1832 opened in 1837 between Red Hills and Chintadripet, using a rotary steam engine from England to move granite. In 1853 the first passenger train ran 34 kilometres from Bombay to Thane, fourteen carriages carrying 400 people behind three locomotives named Sahib, Sindh and Sultan. That day is still celebrated as Indian Railways Day. Eastern India's first passenger service followed on 15 August 1854, from Howrah to Hooghly.
Milestones stacked up. Ajmer built the first locally made locomotive in 1877, and in 1897 Jodhpur Railway made electric lights standard in coaches. The first electric train ran from Bombay to Kurla on 3 February 1925. By 1950 about 42 separate companies worked some 55,000 kilometres of track; they were merged into Indian Railways and split into six zones, now 18. Chittaranjan began building locomotives in 1950 and Madras made coaches from 1956, the same year the first air-conditioned train linked Howrah and New Delhi.
Modernisation continued. Computerised reservations arrived in 1986, the first Shatabdi Express ran in 1988, and online ticketing launched on 3 August 2002. A semi-high-speed train set capable of over 160 kilometres per hour rolled out in 2018. By October 2025 about 99.1 percent of broad-gauge lines were electrified.
The scale is vast. The system manages 135,207 kilometres of track, the fourth largest national network, with 327,991 freight wagons and 91,948 passenger coaches. As of February 2026 its fleet still included 16 steam locomotives among more than 17,000 electric and diesel ones. Women made up 0.13 million employees in March 2025, including 2,162 locomotive pilots.
Source: Indian Railways
