Rail transport in India consists of primarily of passenger and freight shipments along an integrated rail network. Indian Railways (IR), a statutory body under the ownership of the Ministry of Railways of the Government of India, operates India's national railway system. It is the primary owner and operator of rail operations throughout the country including suburban rail in major metros.
Ircon International, or Indian Railway Construction International Limited (IRCON), is an Indian engineering & construction corporation, specialized in transport infrastructure. The public sector undertaking was established in 1976, by the Indian Railways under the Indian Companies Act 1956. IRCON was registered as the Indian Railway Construction International Limited, a wholly owned entity of the Indian Railways. Its primary charter was the construction of railway projects in India and abroad. Ircon has since diversified into other transport and infrastructure segments and with its expanded scope of operations around the world, the name was changed to Indian Railway International Ltd. in October 1995.
The National Capital Region is a planning region centered upon the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi in India. It encompasses Delhi and several districts surrounding it from the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The NCR and the associated National Capital Region Planning Board (NCRPB) were created in 1985 to plan the development of the region and to evolve harmonized policies for the control of land-uses and development of infrastructure in the region. Prominent cities of NCR include Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida.
Indian Railways operates India's railway system and comes under the purview of the Ministry of Railways of Government of India. As of 2023, it maintains over 108,706 km (67,547 mi) of tracks and operates over 13,000 trains daily. According to the Ministry of Railways, a route capable of supporting trains operating at more than 160 km/h (100 mph) is considered as a higher speed or semi-high speed rail line.
The Noida Metro is a rapid transit system connecting the twin cities of Noida and Greater Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, India. The metro network consists of one line, with a total length of 29.7 kilometres (18.5 mi) serving 21 stations. The system has all elevated stations using standard-gauge tracks.
The National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) is a joint venture company of the Government of India and the states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi. The NCRTC is the owner of RapidX, the Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) project across the National Capital Region (NCR), inaugurated on 20 October 2023. It is operated by Deutsche Bahn.
The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor or Western DFC is a 1,506 km long, under-construction 1,676 mm freight corridor in India. It will connect Dadri in Uttar Pradesh with the Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Navi Mumbai, Raigad District, Maharashtra. The corridor is being built by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), a public-sector unit (PSU) under the Ministry of Railways and would be electrified with double-line operation. The Western DFC entails a new single-line branch from Prithla in Palwal district to Tughlakabad in Delhi, running parallel to the existing New Delhi–Faridabad–Palwal railway line.
Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor or Eastern DFC is a broad gauge freight corridor in India. The railway will run between Ludhiana in Punjab and Dankuni in West Bengal via Meerut and Khurja in Uttar Pradesh. This railway line is one of the multiple freight corridors being constructed by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL), a public-sector unit (PSU) under the Ministry of Railways.
The Diamond Quadrilateral is a project of the Indian Railways to establish a high-speed rail network in India. The Diamond Quadrilateral will connect the four mega cities of India, viz. Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, similar to the Golden Quadrilateral highway system.
Khurja Junction railway station is a railway station at Khurja in Bulandshahr district on the North Central Railway network. It is an important station on the New Delhi–Aligarh–Kanpur main line.
The Indian locomotive class WAG-12B is a class of 25 kV AC electric locomotives that was developed in 2017 by Alstom with technological collaboration with Indian Railways. The model name stands for wide gauge (W), alternating current (A), goods traffic (G) locomotive-12. They entered trial service in 2019. A total of 410 WAG-12B have been built at Electric Locomotive Factory, Madhepura, Bihar, India.
The Indian Government is undertaking several initiatives to upgrade its aging railway infrastructure and enhance its quality of service. The Railway Ministry has announced plans to invest ₹5,400,000 crore to upgrade the railways by 2030. Upgrades include 100% electrification of railways, upgrading existing lines with more facilities and higher speeds, expansion of new lines, upgrading railway stations, introducing and eventually developing a large high-speed train network interconnecting major cities in different parts of India and development of various dedicated freight corridors to cut down cargo costs within the country.
The Bharatmala Pariyojna is an ongoing project that will interconnect 550 District Headquarters through a minimum 4-lane highway by raising the number of corridors to 50 and move 80% freight traffic to National Highways by interconnecting 24 logistics parks, 66 inter-corridors (IC) of total 8,000 km (5,000 mi), 116 feeder routes (FR) of total 7,500 km (4,700 mi) and 7 north east Multi-Modal waterway ports. The project also includes development of tunnels, bridges, elevated corridors, flyovers, overpass, interchanges, bypasses, ring roads etc. to provide shortest, jam free & optimized connectivity to multiple places, it is a centrally-sponsored and funded Road and Highways project of the Government of India. This ambitious umbrella programme will subsume all existing Highway Projects including the flagship National Highways Development Project (NHDP), launched by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government in 1998. Bharatmala is mainly focused on connecting remote areas and satellite cities of megacities such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad etc. The total investment for 83,677 km (51,994 mi) committed new highways is estimated at ₹10.63 lakh crore (US$130 billion), making it the single largest outlay for a government road construction scheme. The project will build highways from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and then cover the entire string of Himalayan territories - Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand - and then portions of borders of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alongside Terai, and move to West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, and right up to the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur and Mizoram. Special emphasis will be given on providing connectivity to far-flung border and rural areas including the tribal and backward areas.
The North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor or North-South DFC is a proposed freight specific railway connecting New Delhi and Chennai. The approximate length of the corridor is 2,343 km with 43 proposed stations. Ministry of Railways has assigned Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) to undertake Preliminary Engineering & Traffic Survey (PETS) for four additional corridors:
The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) was incorporated in 2016 to manage the High Speed Rail Corridor in India. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Indian Railways, Ministry of Railways, Government of India.
Vinod Kumar Yadav is the Administrator of Delhi Gymkhana Club Limited and is the Ex Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Railway Board, Indian Railways. He previously served as the General Manager for South Central Railway zone of Indian Railways and held various other important assignments in the Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited and in the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. He is from Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineers (IRSEE) – 1980 batch.
Haryana Orbital Rail Corridor (HORC), with target completion by 31 March 2025, is an under construction twin-track 121.7-kilometre (75.6 mi)-km long, 160 km per hour high-speed, railway project in Haryana state of India, which will run around along the Western Peripheral Expressway (WPE) on the western side of Delhi.
The Chennai-Mysuru high speed rail corridor is India's third high-speed rail project after the Mumbai Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor and Delhi Varanasi High Speed Rail Corridor. The 435 km HSR corridor will connect Chennai to Mysuru through 9 stations.
The dedicated freight corridors in India are a network of electric broad gauge freight railway lines that solely serve freight trains, thus making the freight service in India faster and efficient. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) is responsible for undertaking planning, development, mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of these corridors.
The RapidX is a rapid rail system operated by the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) in India's National Capital Region (NCR). The goal of the RapidX is to replace the conventional non-air-conditioned MEMU-operated local train network with a rapid rail system. The semi-high speed trainsets which are providing services on RapidX have been named as Namo Bharat and have an average speed of 100 km/h (62 mph).
₹108.54 crore (US$13 million) (2019) [2] 
