The North Western Railway (abbreviated NWR) is one of 19 railway zones in India. It is headquartered at Jaipur, Rajasthan and has 59,075+ employees, 658+ stations and a route length of more than across the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana. NWR operates international rail service Thar Express from Jodhpur to Karachi. This zone is the key enabler of the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project by virtue of running railways 1,500 km long Western Dedicated Freight Corridor.
History
In 1882, a -wide metre-gauge line from Marwar Junction to Pali was built by the Rajputana Railway. It was extended to Luni in 1884 and Jodhpur on 9 March 1885. New Jodhpur Railway was later combined with Bikaner Railway to form Jodhpur–Bikaner Railway in 1889, when the Bikaner Princely State and Jodhpur Princely State started constructing the Jodhpur–Bikaner Railway within the Rajputana Agency. In 1891, the -wide metre gauge Jodhpur–Bikaner line was commissioned under the Rajputana–Malwa Railway, Jodhpur–Merta Road section was commissioned on 8 April, the Merta Road-Nagaur section on 16 October, and the Nagaur-Bikaner section on 9 December. In 1900, Jodhpur–Bikaner line combined with Jodhpur–Hyderabad Railway, some part of this railway is in Pakistan, leading to connection with Hyderabad of Sindh Province. In 1901–02, the Jodhpur–Bikaner line was extended to Bathinda in 1901–02 to connect it with the metre-gauge section of the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway and the metre gauge of North Western Railway Delhi–Fazilka line via Hanumangarh. In 1924, the combined entity Jodhpur and Bikaner Railways was split to function as two independent Railway companies. After Independence, a part of Jodhpur Railway went to West Pakistan. In 1926, the workshop at Bikaner (Lalgarh) was set up to carry out periodic overhauling of metre gauge coaches and wagons. In 1951, on 5 November the Jodhpur–Bikaner line was merged with the Western Railway. Sometime around or prior to 1991, the construction work for the conversion from metre gauge to -wide broad gauge of the Jodhpur–Bikaner line, along with the link to Phulera, were started, and it was already functioning as broad gauge Jodhpur–Merta City–Bikaner–Bathinda line by 2008. In 2002, on 1 October the North Western Railway zone came into existence. In 2012, the Bikaner Heritage Rail Museum was opened at Bikaner to displays items related to the Jodhpur and Bikaner Railway.
In 1884, The Rajputana–Malwa Railway extended the -wide metre-gauge Delhi–Rewari section of Delhi–Fazilka line to Bathinda, which was The Southern Punjab Railway Co. opened the Delhi–Bathinda–Samasatta line in 1897. The line passed through Muktasar and Fazilka tehsils and provided direct connection through Samma Satta (now in Pakistan) to Karachi.
On 18 February 2006, Thar Express, an Indian non-stop international passenger train operated weekly by Indian Railways using its own coaches and locomotives, between Jodhpur in India and Karachi in Pakistan.
Earlier, Sindh Mail train operated on this route from 1900 to 1965 when the track was bombed out by the Pakistan Air Force in Indo-Pakistani War of 1965. Thar Link Express was run started after 41 years in 2006 based on the earlier rail communication agreement. The rail communication agreement was signed by India and Pakistan in 1976, to ease the soured relations after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 for the successful liberation of Bangladesh by Indian Army. The rail communication agreement is renewable every three years, and currently it is valid until January 2019.
In the 1990s, the Delhi–Jaipur line and Jaipur–Ahmedabad line were converted to broad gauge (BG). In 2007, the line going toward from Phulera to Chittaurgarh was converted to BG.
Between 2008 and 2011, the Bikaner–Rewari line was converted to broad gauge.
In 2009, the metre-gauge Hisar–Sadulpur section was converted to broad gauge.
By December 2017, railways for the first time installed 6,095 GPS-enabled "Fog Pilot Assistance System" railway signalling devices in four most affected zones, Northern Railway zone, North Central Railway zone, North Eastern Railway zone and North Western Railway zone, by doing away with the old practice of putting firecrackers on train tracks to alter train divers running trains on snail's pace. With these devices, train pilots precisely know in advance, about the location of signals, level-crossing gates and other such approaching markers.
Organisation
This zone was formed on 1 October 2002, comprising four divisions: Jodhpur and reorganized Bikaner division of the erstwhile Northern Railway zone, and reorganized Jaipur and Ajmer divisions of the erstwhile Western Railway zone.