The Bombay Suburban Railway (Marathi: मुंबई उपनगरीय रेल्वे) is a suburban rail system serving the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. It is operated by Indian Railways' two zonal Western Railways (WR) and Central Railways (CR). The system carries more than 7.24 million commuters daily. It has the highest passenger density of any urban railway system in the world. The trains plying on its routes are commonly referred to as local trains or simply as locals by Mumbaikars. Spread over 465 km, the suburban railway operates on 1500 V DC / 25000 V AC power supply from overhead catenary lines. The suburban services are run by electric multiple units (EMUs). 191 rakes (train sets) of 9-car, 12-car & 15-car composition are utilised to run 2342 train services, carrying 6.94 million passengers per day. If annual ridership (2.64 billion) is taken into account, the Suburban rail would be the second busiest rapid transit system in the world. Due to the geographical spread of the population and location of business areas, the rail network is the principal mode of mass transport in Mumbai. As Mumbai's population swelled, frequent overcrowding has become a serious issue, and numerous safety concerns have been raised over the years. A metro system and a monorail system are under construction in Mumbai to ease the travelling conditions on the suburban network. The Mumbai Suburban Railway, as well as the Indian Railways, are an offshoot of the first railway to be built by the British in India, and is also the oldest railway system in Asia. The first train ran between Bori Bunder (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) and Thane, a distance of 34 km, on 16 April 1853 at 3:35PM. The 14-coach train took 57 minutes to complete the 32km journey, with a halt at Sion for taking in water. Since 1991, it has faced rapid expansion. The Bombay Railway History Group has been striving to document railway heritage along this line. Source: Wikipedia This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of HD imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of tens of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com.
