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Western Railway |
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The formation of Western Railway dates back to November 5, 1951. It was formed by the merger of several state-owned railways that included Bombay (now Mumbai), Baroda and Central India Railway (BB&CI) and the Saurashtra, Rajputana and Jaipur Railways. Subsequently with the inauguration of BB&CI Railway in 1855, the project was further extended beyond Baroda in a north easterly direction towards Godhra, Ratlam, Nagda and thereafter northwards direction towards Mathura to eventually link with the Great India Peninsula Railway, now Central Railway, which had already started operating in Mumbai in 1853.
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The first suburban service in Mumbai with steam traction was introduced in April 1867. It was extended to Churchgate in 1870. By 1900 45 trains in each direction were carrying over one million passengers annually. After the establishment of Western Railway certain further jurisdictional changes were effected. The management of BB&CI Railway was taken over by government of India from January 1st, 1942. The Broad gauge in Western Railway was 3623.88 kms, the metre gauge was 2121.05 kms and narrow gauge was 786.67 kms.
The regions served by Western Railway include the whole of Gujarat, part of Rajasthan and some portion of Madhya Pradesh. The six divisions of Western Railway include Mumbai, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Ratlam, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. Two erstwhile divisions viz. Jaipur and Ajmer were merged into North West Railway on 1st October 2002 and Kota division was made a part of West Central Railway on 1st April 2003. The Western coast of India served by Western Railway has a number of ports. The important ports are Kandla, Mundra, Pipavav, Navlakhi, Bedi, Rozi, Okha and Bhavnagar.
In Mumbai the suburban section of Western Railway extends from Chruchgate to Vihar. This has again been extebnded to Dahanu Road. Today of the 14 million people traveling every day by Indian Railways, more than 6 million people travel every day on Mumbai suburban section alone. The approximate capacity of Western Railway is 3 million passengers every day.
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