Western railway

Western railway

Western Railway in its instant form came into being or existence on 5th November, 1951 by the unification of its antecedent, the former Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway (BB&CI), with other State Railways viz, Saurashtra, Rajputana and Jaipur.

western railway

The BB&CI Railway was itself comprised in 1855, beginning with the construction of a 29 mile broad gauge track from Ankleshwar to Utran in Gujarat state along the West Coast. In 1864, the railway was stretched up to Mumbai.
Later on, the project was further lengthened beyond Baroda in a northeastern direction towards Godhra, Ratlam, Nagda and thenceforth in the north towards Mathura to eventually link with the Great India Peninsula Railway, nowCentral Railway, which had already began operating in Mumbai in 1853. In 1883, a Metre Guage Railway system, at the start linking Delhi with Agra, Jaipur and Ajmer, was constituted.

The Government of India adopted the management of the BB&CI railway from 1.1.1942. In 1949, the Gaikwad Baroda State Railway was incorporated with the BB&CI Railway. After Western Railway came to life some more jurisdictional modifications were affected. The gauge-wise kilometrage of Western Railways as at present, is as under

Broad Gauge	4147.37 kms.
Metre Gauge	1412.39 kms.
Narrow Gauge	621.70 kms.
TOTAL	6181.46 kms.

Western Railway assists entire Gujarat, part of Rajasthan and some regions of Madhya Pradesh. Western Railway now constitutes of six sections viz. Mumbai, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Ratlam, Rajkot and Bhavnagar. Two former divisions viz. Jaipur and Ajmer were combined into North West Railway on 1st October 2002 and Kotadivision was formed a part of West Central Railway on 1st April 2003. A new section i.e. Ahmedabad was created on 1st April 2003. The Western coast of India functioned by Western Railway has a number of ports, significant among them are Kandla, Mundra, Pipavav, Navlakhi, Bedi, Rozi, Okha and Bhavnagar.

http://www.wr.indianrailways.gov.in/