Track gauge Broad gauge Date of operation 2003 | Website SWR official website | |
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Dates of operation 2003; 14 years ago (2003)– Headquarters Club Road, Keshwapur Hubballi Karnataka Locale Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu Predecessors Southern Railway zone, South Central Railway zone, Central Railway zone | ||
The South Western Railway is one of the 16 railway zones in India.
Contents
History
It is headquartered at Hubballi and comprises 3 divisions namely Hubballi, Mysuru, and Bengaluru. The 4th division at Gulbarga will come up shortly and preparations of work has already begun. The zone came into existence on 1 April 2003.
Jurisdiction
South Western Railway covers most of the railway lines in the state of Karnataka (other than the Konkan Railway), west parts of Dharmapuri district and Hosur taluka of Tamil Nadu.
Development
Karnataka has the least number of electrified and/or doubled broad gauge lines compared to other states in India (5%).
The section between Bangalore-Pandavapura (128 kilometres (80 mi)) and Mysore-Srirangapatna (7 kilometres (4.3 mi)) has been doubled and opened to traffic. Section including Srirangapatna station and Cauvery bridges remains to be completed, owing to shifting of Tipu Sultan's armoury. The Bangalore-Hubli line is being doubled in isolated patches. While Bangalore-Tumkur was doubled and opened to traffic in 2007, progress on other sections has been painfully slow. The doubling of the Arsikere-Chikjajur section of the same line was completed in 2015, while doubling of Tumakuru-Arsikere and Huballi-Chikjajur section are in progress. Bellary-Hospet line is completely doubled and opened for traffic, Hubli-Gadag and Londa - Miraj - Pune line doubling is in progress. In the 2016 Railway Budget, electrification of Bangalore-Omalur (via:Hosur,Dharmapuri) was also announced. In February 2017, the Bangalore - Hassan railway line via Shravanabelagola was completed.
Modernisation
The Mysuru Division of South Western Railways will be designated as "Digital Division" after fully adopting its current technology harnessing programme. Government of India had asked Railways divisions to cut red tape and reduce paper work in offices. All the officials will adopt technologies like WhatsApp and Google Drive to share reports and other documents. This will save lot of papers being used for circulating reports as done currently. Two web based helplines have been launched so that digitised information can be shared among different officials. The inspection reports regarding maintenance, passenger amenities, cleanliness, electronics and communication etc. will be managed by a new software which is under construction now. These measures will cut down redundant works, reduce number of registers and reports maintained by officials, reduce paper consumption and improve the efficiency and celerity of operations.
Project Unigauge
Since 2007, the SWR is entirely Indian gauge. SWR has many WDG4 and WDP4 currently based at diesel loco sheds Hubli and Krishnarajapuram.