Indian rail network is the second largest in the world under single management.
Indian rail is the  fourth largest freight carrier amongst the world’s railways.
Indian rail network is the  largest carrier of passengers amongst the world’s railway system.

Indian Railways(IR) is  fully owned by Government of India. The Indian Railways, the world's second largest rail network under a single management, continues to be one of the biggest contributors to the country's economic progress. Railway performance vastly improved in the last two years due to better resource management, among other things, through increased wagon load, faster turnaround time and a more rational pricing policy. The Indian Railways are spread all over the country covering a route of 63000 Kilometers and as per the records Indian Railways runs a total of 14400+ trains on daily basis which includes the passenger trains
The Railways have made a profit of US$ 4.6 billion-versus US$ 3.4 billion in the previous year.IR have plan to introduce, 300-350 km per hour trains and 225 stations to  develop in the next five years.

In the financial year that has just ended, IR  lifted 726 Million tones of cargo,  carried 6.35 billion passengers and  accounted for 2.3% of the country’s GDP and employed 1.4 million employees directly. IRr freight is expected to grow at 8.6% and passenger traffic, at 6% over the next five years. By the beginning of 2012, IR plan to carry 1100 million tones of freight traffic and 8.4 billion originating passengers. Over the next five years,  investment needs would be about US$ 56 billion. IR hope to mobilize a large part of the investment requirement amounting to at least US$ 15 billion through debt and PPP.

Salient features of Indian Railways:
Total route coverage  > 63500KM
Number of locomotives >7900
Number of fright wagons> 222400
Number of passenger coaches > 42500
Number of persons employed >1.6 million
Number of trains operated per day> 14000