Indian Railways @ ripe old 175: Romance, Realism, Rhetoric, and the Railway Soul

  

    The romance, the recalls

Indian Railways (IR) is far more than a mere transport network. It is a national habit, a moving theatre, and, for millions, a treasure trove of memories. For nearly 175 years, its steel ribbons have carried people across geography and history, linking distant towns and weaving strangers, sometimes for just a few fleeting hours, into one another’s lives. A train journey here is rarely just a means to an end. The journey itself assumes primacy over the destination, unfolding as an unscripted spectacle of comedy and suspense, romance and heartbreak, unexpected kindness and, occasionally, spectacular rudeness.

Every Indian treasures a railway memory, especially the childhood battle for a window seat, where the metal bars framed the nation like a grand, unending documentary unspooling before eager eyes. Then there are the mesmerizing horizons of a boundless India, shifting from stark, haunting desolation to the vibrant chaos of packed humanity. The train glides through a living canvas painted with the ecstasy of joy and the heavy shadows of grief, charting a course through the sweat of relentless toil and the soft luxury of idle ease. One witnesses the the thumping heart of a subcontinent, a steel serpent that has wound its way deep into the Indian psyche. This is a true democracy on wheels where presidents and porters share platforms, united by the yellow-boarded promise of arrival. It has hosted whirlwind love stories, clandestine business deals, emotional family reunions, and countless unwritten tales, all playing out within the rhythmic rumble of its carriages.

Stepping away from the uniform of a railwayman and sitting simply by the window as a passenger, I invite you to share a few unforgettable flavours from this rich thali of romance, legacy, and timeless stories.

 

The historic 1853 train to Thane began an epic journey that today reaches places unimaginable to its pioneers. Decades later, Mahatma Gandhi’s extensive travels in lower-class carriages proved that the railway helped kindle a grand political awakening and the spirit of liberty, just as easily as it carried ordinary life. The majestic architecture of Mumbai’s Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus), Howrah, and Charbagh stations still speak of an age when railway design was built to inspire pure awe; truly world-class at that stage unlike the abominations which are thrust on our sensibilities.

On the platforms, red-shirted porters balance impossible loads with acrobatic grace, while the station vendors raise a sing-song cry of ‘chai-chai’ that rouses even the deepest sleeper. Stations and trains transform into bustling microcosms of India, where the great Indian tamasha plays out in all its vivid hues, blending a lull and a hustle, a joy and a jostle, into a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of humanity. Nostalgia lingers for the vintage steam engines whose whistles announced both departure and endless possibility, the paper reservation charts inspected with the solemnity of public verdicts, and those packed general compartments where personal space remains a philosophical concept rather than a measurable commodity.

There is also the eager wait for the catering or platform food, which may not be a gourmet’s delight, but tastes many times more pleasurable in transit. Even the frenzied scramble across the Foot Overbridges turns reaching a platform into a grand expedition.

 

Yet, the railways continue to leap forward. The towering Chenab Bridge on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link now carries trains across dizzying terrain that once seemed to mock human engineering. The majestic Pamban bridges, old and new, arches of steel and stone rising from the ocean, bridging not just the sea, but the profound devotion and sacred prayers of a deeply religious nation. Meanwhile, the sleek Vande Bharat, born as Train 18, represents a modern triumph of indigenous design, proving that technological innovation can merge beautifully with trackside romance.

Romance is the ultimate emotional capital of Indian Railways. It explains why people who complain about its delays will still fiercely defend its existence, and why railway lore passes seamlessly from one generation to another. Shakespeare’s Antonio in The Tempest declares, “Travelers ne’er did lie, though fools at home condemn ’em.” Every railway traveller returns home with a story, and while not every story is flattering, each one is unforgettably alive.

Some transformational milestones

An institution that has shaped the country on such a cosmic scale must be judged not only by its nostalgia but also by its capacity to evolve. Since Independence, IR, with its sprawling canvas and legendary girth, has repeatedly reinvented itself. This transformation has been fuelled by visionary leadership, the silent brilliance of unsung teams whose names rarely entered the public imagination, or sheer, unyielding necessity: often a heady cocktail of both. Its 175-year saga is peppered with milestones, sudden detours, and deliberate course corrections, all shaping the steel leviathan we see today.

Rather than getting lost in the thickets of every historical twist and turn, let us train our gaze on the defining moments since Independence. These are the tipping points and turning tides that nudged, jolted, or propelled this mighty behemoth forward on its steel-bound journey. While these milestones are not exhaustive, each is etched deeply into the iron chronicle of the railway's evolution.

The Assam Rail Link of 1949, forged under Engineer-in-Chief Karnail Singh, miraculously restored a vital lifeline to the North-East after Partition abruptly severed established routes through what had become East Pakistan. Decades later, the introduction of the Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani Express in 1969 redefined premium long-distance travel, arriving on the scene as one of the fastest trains in all of Asia except Japan. Accessibility to comfort widened dramatically with the rollout of air-conditioned second-class accommodation in 1979 and AC three-tier coaches in 1993. On the freight front, M. S. Gujral’s revolutionary introduction of extended runs for unit freight rakes bypassed repeated marshalling yards and turbocharged freight efficiency. Later, the sleek Shatabdi Express and the game-changing computerised Passenger Reservation System (PRS), both championed during Madhavrao Scindia’s ministerial tenure, forever elevated both the passenger experience and everyday railway operations. While the Shatabdi redefined the ease of day travel that we take entirely for granted today, the PRS was an absolute revolution for long-distance journeys. Before its dawn, travelers lived in agonizing suspense, never truly knowing if their telegrams for a return booking had actually reached the destination or simply vanished into thin air.

 

The Konkan Railway triumphantly demonstrated that formidable terrain need not condemn an Indian infrastructure project to the familiar affliction of interminable delays. Carved defiantly through the rugged Western Ghats, negotiating raw mountains, deep valleys, rushing rivers, and innumerable tunnels and bridges, it was an audacious engineering enterprise. It challenged not merely geography but also the country’s entrenched culture of slow project execution. Under the legendary leadership of E. Sreedharan, it showed what clear accountability, professional autonomy, and a relentless focus on delivery could achieve. These lessons travelled far beyond the Konkan coast, helping shape the high-speed expectations for the Delhi Metro and subsequent urban transit networks. For once, the timeless phrase ‘time is money’ had found a precise railways’ translation.

Later, a dramatic surge in freight growth during Lalu Prasad Yadav’s tenure demonstrated that superior asset utilization could yield spectacular results without waiting for fresh tracks at every turn. It served as a useful institutional reminder that locomotives and wagons earn their keep by moving, not by being held hostage to endless Mechanical Nd Civil engineering embargoes. Simultaneously, allowing private container train operators opened vibrant new frontiers in logistics, injecting healthy competition and customer-oriented thinking into a domain long accustomed to a rigid state monopoly.

Technology has been brought within reach of millions through computerised unreserved ticketing, later the  mobile ticketing services and successive generations of digital ticketing. This empowered citizens who had little use for elaborate digital jargon but every reason to avoid serpentine queues and agonizing uncertainty.

Environmental dignity arrived with the development of bio-toilets in collaboration with DRDO. Widely adopted between 2013 and 2018, they finally addressed the environmental damage of direct discharge onto the tracks, albeit, their widespread adoption required a firm nudge from the Supreme Court, a reminder that even the most sensible reforms sometimes require an external prod before institutional inertia yields. This was followed by the absolute elimination of unmanned level crossings by 2019, a monumental safety intervention that removed a longstanding source of trackside accidents and anxiety. More recently, the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link, culminating in direct train connectivity to Srinagar, along with some spectacular rail links in the North-east, stand as the most breathtaking feats in modern construction history. It remains a triumphant saga of engineering persistence against a terrain that seemed determined to have the final word.

Other profound transformations have been no less consequential, even if they arrived without a single dramatic inauguration to capture the public spotlight. The massive, systemic conversion of tracks to broad gauge, the development of increasingly muscular diesel and electric locomotives, the transition to air-brake and centre-buffer-coupler freight stock, the introduction of passenger-safe LHB coaches, visibly cleaner stations, the Freight Operations Information System, and Rail-madad portal have steadily altered the foundational chemistry of how the railways work. Their compounding effects accumulated over time rather than arriving as a spectacular overnight revolution. Yet, a railway is often transformed just as much by these persistent, less glamorous improvements as by a headline-grabbing bridge or a train that attracts thunderous applause.

Then there is Train 18, now celebrated globally as Vande Bharat, a transformation with which I share a deeply personal association. Having led the project from its initial concept to final delivery, I naturally find it difficult to assess its place in railway history with the cold detachment of a disinterested historian. The achievement deserves recognition, but the ultimate verdict on its lasting significance belongs to the passengers, the readers, and, ultimately, to time itself. Pride in having helped create something does not automatically entitle an architect to declare it a historical watershed. That judgment must rest entirely on what the innovation permanently changed, how far its benefits endured, and whether it successfully opened the floodgates to further progress. The whistle may be familiar and the applause deeply gratifying, but the final historical verdict must wait for the grander journey to unfold, even as the Vande Bharat network increasingly mirrors the changing map of the nation itself.

  The Rave, the hype

Today, IR has a golden opportunity that earlier generations could only have dreamed of. Generous government support has made capital investment far less constrained than it once was. But money is merely an input, not an outcome, and splashy announcements are not actual achievements. Despite more than twenty-one lakh crore rupees invested over a decade, freight growth remains hopelessly stuck in the quagmire of a meagre two to three per cent per fiscal year. Average freight speeds stubbornly refuse to budge from a sluggish twenty-five kilometres per hour. Meanwhile, the Operating Ratio hovers precariously near ninety-eight or ninety-nine, and even that requires a bit of statistical gymnastics, leaving absolutely no room for true financial resilience. The Dedicated Freight Corridors have absorbed enormous institutional effort, yet the hoped-for shift in traffic has simply not materialized.

A grand promise of three thousand million tonnes of freight by 2027 sits very uneasily beside actual loading data that falls far below that level, all while the railway's freight modal share struggles to stay around twenty-five per cent. The lofty ambition to eliminate passenger waiting lists entirely by 2027 remains a distant mirage. Similarly, ambitious Kavach safety targets for thousands of locomotives and track kilometres have wildly outpaced actual deployment on the ground. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail project, once confidently spoken of as a 2022 certainty, has slipped far beyond its horizon, while an indigenous two hundred and eighty kilometre per hour train promised for 2027 invites immediate scrutiny. Even the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor’s completion date slipped multiple times before its eventual wrap-up in 2026. Furthermore, futuristic hydrogen trains are discussed even for routes where standard electrification already exists or where the commercial case is completely unclear. Grand claims of four hundred Vande Bharat trains by 2025, a missing sleeper version, and 160 kilometre per hour operations on trunk routes have all been surrounded by tight timelines that reality has simply declined to respect.

Then we have the sweeping station redevelopment promises, lingering structural uncertainty around the Indian Railway Management Service, and the introduction of freight EMUs and passenger-cum-cargo double-decker coaches without any clearly established customers. There is even the bizarre claim that merely merging two laws constitutes a major, historic reform. Heavy electrification is celebrated as pure green progress, conveniently ignoring that the electricity itself may still be generated from burning coal. To top it off, hyperloop proposals promise to bring cities within minutes of each other while practical questions of basic technology, partnerships, and commercialisation remain entirely unanswered. A proposed Mumbai-Dubai undersea rail link by 2030 is the exact kind of headline that makes even a seasoned railwayman check whether the calendar has accidentally entered the realm of science fiction.

Shakespeare, if called upon to wrap it up, would perhaps ask, “Thou dost swagger in social media splendour, yet thy freight crawleth like a snail with gout. Art thou like a painted lion—roaring in pamphlets, but silent in the jungle of performance? Tell me, good sir, what art thou—the colossus of transport, or merely babus and babudom in shining armour?"

The problem begins when raw aspiration is aggressively marketed as final delivery, targets are repeated until they resemble finished accomplishments, and healthy scrutiny is treated as institutional disloyalty. Consider a striking example of the railway's make-believe world of injured innocence: the uproar over a Fevicol advertisement depicting passengers clinging comically to the doorway of an overcrowded Mumbai local train. The Western Railway objected instantly, and the advertisement was promptly withdrawn. A far more revealing response would have been to ask why the image struck such an instantly recognisable chord with the public. A strong, mature institution treats criticism as a necessary mirror, even when it is unkind. A fragile one simply attacks the reflection.

King Lear complained, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” One might easily adapt his profound anguish to a railway apparatus that resents an unflattering advertisement far more than the actual conditions that made it plausible. This is not mockery from the outside. It is a passionate demand for better, precisely because the railways matter so much to the nation. Romance without realism quickly degrades into mere sentimentality; reform without accountability becomes nothing but paperwork; and loud rhetoric without execution becomes cheap theatre.

What lies ahead?

IR has undeniably given the country extraordinary memories and undertaken historical transformations of genuine consequence. Yet, it has also accumulated staggering delays, structural weaknesses, and a dangerous fondness for grand declarations. Acknowledging these shortcomings does not deny its progress, just as celebrating progress does not require us to pretend that every impossible target has been met.

As things stand today, the railway finds itself in a highly favourable position as infrastructure spending enjoys unprecedented support from the government, offering a rare opportunity for a true renaissance. There are many narratives surrounding this journey, but the public discourse is currently warped by super-ambitious projections and selectively highlighted achievements. At times, this leads to a severe imbalance, where yet-unaccomplished success stories are amplified while deeply complex challenges are either downplayed or completely overlooked.

Nostalgia may sell the tickets, and electricity may power the trains, but accountability must drive the engine. Romance gave Indian Railways its soul, and reform gave it the physical means to evolve. Hype must not be allowed to seize the controls. The next chapter of this great saga should be written not in glossy digital presentations or headline-friendly promises, but in reliable services, safer journeys, faster freight, sound finances, and projects completed exactly when needed. For an institution that has carried generations towards their destinations, the finest tribute is not another declaration of greatness. It is the quiet, measurable business of getting things done.

I do not claim to have covered the entire, sprawling gamut of romance, transformation, and hype. What did I miss, friends? Do add your own thoughts, readers, particularly regarding the hype, which, in the days I write this, remains the absolute prima donna of the railway's discourse.

…