Indian Railways has always remained the backbone of Indian transport system.  Since its inception during the British regime, the Railways been the main public transporting system in India.  Owing to the supreme significance of the Indian Railway in the mobility of the large population of this vast stretch of land, it has been aptly said that to discover the bewitchingly diverse patterns of Indian cultural mosaic, one need only to make a railway journey across the length and breadth of India.  That much is the commutation of the citizenry of India in this mode of transportation.  The Indian Rail transport is the most commonly used long distance transportation system in the country.  The network has a total length of over 63,140km (39,200 miles).  One of the busiest and heaviest carriers of the world, the Indian Railways carries over 5 billion passengers and 350 million tones of freight in a year.

While standing as the backbone of the Indian transport system, The Railways runs on three categories of tracks – Broad Gauge, Meter gauge and Narrow Gauge.  Among these three kinds of gauges, the Broad Gauge is the most prevalent type of track.  It is 1,676 mm (5.5 ft) wide and about 86,526 km of track under the Indian Railway network runs on this type of track.  In some locations where Broad Gauge in not feasible, Meter Gauge is being used.  However, that covers only very less length of the railway network.  Again, Narrow Gauge is present at very few locations, especially in hilly stretches.  It covers around 3,651 km and is mainly used in the Nilgiris and Darjeeling stretches. Concerted arrangements are in progress for the implementation of the Unigauge project to convert all tracks in to Broad Gauge.  The zoos in India also use Narrow Gauge and such tracks are also maintained by the Indian Railways.

There can be no doubt that the backbone of the Indian transport is the Indian Railways.  It is a mammoth transportation system having multifaceted aspects.  Out of a length of over 63,028 km, 16,000 km of track has been electrified.  Passenger accommodation of the Indian Railways falls in to various categories.  The categories are: a) 1A First Class AC; 2) 2A AC Two Tier; c) 3A AC Three Tier; d) CC AC Chair Car; e) 2S Seater Class; and f) G General.   Indian Railways has Bholu as its mascot.  Again, trains are categorized in terms of speed, number of stops, fare-structure, etc.  The express trains are identified by a four-digit number. The first two digits indicate the zone and the division respectively and the last two are the serial number of the train.