A journey from Delhi to Bangalore, train slows down as it stop at a station in India.
Indian Railways is an Indian state-owned enterprise, owned and operated by the Government of India through the Ministry of Railways. It is one of the world's largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km (71,000 mi) of track over a route of 65,436 km (40,660 mi) and 7,172 stations. In 2013–14, IR carried 8,425 million passengers annually or more than 23 million passengers daily (roughly half of which were suburban passengers) and 1050.18 million tons of freight in the year. In 2013–2014 Indian Railways had revenues of INR1441.67 billion (US$23 billion) which consists of INR940.0 billion (US$15 billion) from freight and INR375.0 billion (US$6.1 billion) from passengers tickets.
Railways were first introduced to India in the year 1853 from Bombay to Thane. In 1951 the systems were nationalised as one unit, the Indian Railways, becoming one of the largest networks in the world. IR operates both long distance and suburban rail systems on a multi-gauge network of broad, metre and narrow gauges. It also owns locomotive and coach production facilities at several places in India and are assigned codes identifying their gauge, kind of power and type of operation. Its operations cover twenty nine states and seven union territories and also provides limited international services to Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Indian Railways is the world's ninth largest commercial or utility employer, by number of employees, with over 1.307 million employees. As for rolling stock, IR holds over 239,281 Freight Wagons, 62,924 Passenger Coaches and 9,013 Locomotives (43 steam, 5,345 diesel and 4,568 electric locomotives). The trains have a 5 digit numbering system and runs 12,617 passenger trains and 7421 freight trains daily. As of 31 March 2013, 20,884 km (12,977 mi) (31.9%) of the total 65,436 km (40,660 mi) route length was electrified. Since 1960, almost all electrified sections on IR use 25,000
