Indian Railway is the second largest train network of the world. It has number of railway zones to proper management of rail network and offering the best services to passenger. The Southern Railway is one of them and is the oldest zone of Indian Railways. It was established on 14th April, 1951. The Southern Railway was created by merging 3 railways of three states South Indian Railway, Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway and Mysore State Railway. Headquarter of Southern Railway is in Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu. There are six divisions under control of Southern Railway namely Madurai, Chennai, Palakkad, Tiruchirapalli, Salem and Thiruvananthapuram.
The Southern Railway covers many south Indian states with major segment of Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala along with small portion of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh state. Southern Railway zone is very different than other zones of Indian railway due to its revenue come from passengers rather than freight. It serves around 500 millions passengers annually and these are main source of its revenue. In 2005, Indian Railway Board showed green light to formation of new railway division Salem. The decision of creation new railway division is taken to improve railway infrastructure, providing better facilities, train services as well as better administrative control.
The Southern Railway serves number of railway stations including Chennai Central, Erode, Trivandrum Central, Chennai Egmore, Madurai and Erode. Even Southern Railway has a large section of meter gauge lines while other zones of Indian Railway have broad gauge lines. Therefore prime focus of this railway is to convert all meter gauge lines to broad gauge. Besides it, Southern Railway is concentrating on improvement of other services such as better catering stalls, high-tech platform and stations. It is also doing work to install automated signal system to decrease number of accidents and planning to avoid accidents completely.
The Southern Railway is a gateway of south India train network. Therefore it is upgrading its covering stations as world class standardization. In this row first name comes of Trivandrum Central railway and Chennai Central station, which are being upgraded. The Chennai Central station and Trivandrum Central railway stations are the most profitable source for Southern Railway. According to railway board, Chennai central station serves approximate one million passengers daily. To keep in mind, the importance of stations from where maximum revenue come, the Southern Railway decided upgrade all profitable stations to world class standards.
The Southern Railway has its online presence at southernrailway.gov.in to spread information related with. It is a train information portal for passengers to being updated with latest trains news and train timings. Passengers can gather information online about Irctc PNR status enquiry for reservation availability, e-ticket, sport Ur trains,timings and more that they needs. Southern Railway’s website http://www.southernrailway.gov.in is wikipedia to know all things about it. It has numerous information segments that include passenger information, public information, business information and departmental information.