Railways and pipelines

Three gauges (Table 7.1). Gauge is the gap between the two rails. Out of 67,956 km of route:

• broad gauge (1.676 m): 63,950 km, almost all of it;
• metre gauge (1.000 m): 2,402 km;
• narrow gauge (0.762 and 0.610 m): 1,604 km.

Where railways are easy and hard to build.

• Easiest: the northern plains: flat land, many people, rich farms. The only trouble is wide rivers that need long bridges.
• Hard: the Himalayas (high, few people, little business); the sands of western Rajasthan; the swamps of Gujarat; the forests of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand. In the peninsular hills, lines go through low hills, gaps or tunnels; the Sahyadri can be crossed only through passes (ghats).
• The Konkan railway on the west coast has helped this important region, but it faces landslides and sinking track in some places.

The book asks: how can we help the trains run on time?

Pipelines: the newest way. Once used only for water, pipelines now carry crude oil, natural gas and petroleum products from the fields to refineries, fertiliser factories and big power plants. Even solids can travel as slurry. Pipelines cost a lot to lay but very little to run, with no losses or delays from moving goods between vehicles. They made refineries far inland, at Barauni, Mathura and Panipat, possible. Three main networks:

• from upper Assam to Kanpur (via Guwahati, Barauni, Prayagraj);
• from Salaya (Gujarat) to Jalandhar (Punjab) (via Viramgam, Mathura, Delhi, Sonipat);
• the Hazira-Vijaipur-Jagdishpur (HVJ) gas pipeline, first 1,700 km long. India's gas pipelines have since grown to about 18,500 km.