South Western Railway zone

It is headquartered at Hubballi and comprises three divisions namely Hubballi, Mysuru, and Bengaluru. The fourth division at Kalaburagi will come up shortly and preparations of work has already begun.[1] The zone came into existence on 1 April 2003.

Map of South Western Railway zone (in Cyan)

South Western Railway covers most of the railway lines in the state of Karnataka (other than the Konkan Railway), many parts of Goa (that are not under Konkan Railway), small parts of Southern Andhra Pradesh, Western parts of Dharmapuri district,hosur taulk and patchur,somanayakanpatti of Tirupattur district of tamilnadu.

Rail Soudha, headquarters of the South Western Railway zone located at Hubbali, Karnataka.

Karnataka has the fewest electrified Route (20.50%) and/or doubled broad gauge lines compared to other states in India .[2]

The section between Bangalore-Mysore(136 kilometres (85 mi)) is doubled and electrified. 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 Kadur-Chikjajur section of the same line was completed in 2015, while doubling of Tumakuru-Kadur and Huballi-Chikjajur section are in progress. Bellary-Hospet line is completely doubled and opened for traffic, Hubli-Gadag, Gadag-Hotgi 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.[3]

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.[4]

Since 2007, the SWR is entirely Indian gauge. SWR has many WDG4, WAP-7, WAG9-HC and WDP4 locomotives currently based at diesel loco sheds Hubli and Krishnarajapuram.

• Zones and divisions of Indian Railways
• All India Station Masters' Association (AISMA)

• South Western Railway
• Indian Railways reservations