RAILWAYS

RAILWAYS It was in 1825 that the first public railway was opened between Stockton and Darlington in northern England. Trains are very important in such countries as Britain, the USA and Japan to carry people from home to places of work. In places where roads are poor, or where the number of people owning cars is small, rail transport has a vital role in passenger transport. In Europe and the USA, however, cars have replaced trains for many' passenger journeys. The greatest railway densi­ties are found in the industrial regions of western Europe, with Belgium leading. Underground railways are important in many European cities, e.g., London, Paris, Moscow.

Transcontinental Railways In vast countries, such as Russia, Canada, US and Australia, there are rail routes that run across the entire breadths of the continents. Such ­railways are known as transcontinental railways. The Trans- ­
Siberian Railway, the longest railway of the world, is an example of the transcontinental railways. It runs from Leningrad and Moscow in the west to Vladivostok in the east. It serves as the most important east-west link for goods and passengers in Siberia and has had an important part to play in the peopling of the empty lands of Siberia. The length of the Trans-Siberian Railway is about 9,000 km.

Some other examples of the transcontinental railways are: Canadian Pacific Railway, which connects St. John in New Brunswick with Vancouver on the Pacific coast; Canadian National Railways, which joins Halifax in Nova Scotia with Prince Rupert in British Columbia. The US, Chile, Australia also have transcontinental railways.

Railways in India The first train in India steamed off from Bombay to Thane, a stretch of 34 km, in 1853. Today, India has the largest rail network in Asia and ranks fourth in the world in this regard. By end of 2004, the total route length in the country was 63,221 km, comprising broad gauge (46,807 km), metre gauge (13,290 km) and narrow gauge (3,124 km). Broad gauge has a width of 1.675 metres, metre gauge of 1.00 metre and the narrow gauge of 0.762 metre and 0.610 metre. Electrified networks account for about 28 per cent of the total route kilometrage. Indian Railways have grown into a vast network of 7,031 stations