South East Central Railway zone
14-South East Central Railway | |
Locale | Chhattisgarh |
---|---|
Dates of operation | 2003– |
Predecessor | South Eastern Railway |
Headquarters | Bilaspur Railway Station |
Website | SECR official website |
The South East Central Railway is one of the seventeen railway zones in India. It is headquartered at Bilaspur and comprises the Bilaspur and Nagpur divisions (formerly part of the South Eastern Railway) and the new Raipur division.
This zone was formerly part of the South Eastern Railway. It was inaugurated on 20 September 1998 and dedicated to the nation on 5 April 2003.
Bilaspur Railway Station is a regional hub for the system. It is the busiest junction in Chhattisgarh and the fourth busiest in Central India. Daily connections are available for Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Amritsar, Agra, Roorkee, Haridwar, Vishakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Tatanagar, Patna, Jabalpur, Raipur, and Varanasi. It is also connected by direct trains to Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Ernakulam, Tirupati, Tirunelveli, Bangalore, Bhuj, Gandhidham, Okha, Porbandar, Dhanbad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Gorakhpur, Shirdi, Udaipur, Bikaner, Jammu, Jodhpur, Guwahati, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ranchi, and many other cities and towns in India.
The zone's major stations are Nagpur (NGP), Bhandara Road (BRD), Gondia (G), Dongergarh (DGG), Rajnandgaon (RJN), DURG (DURG), Bhilai (BIA), Raipur (R), Bhatapara (BYT), Tilda (TLD), Bilaspur (BSP), Gevra Road (GAD), Raigarh (RIG), and Anuppur (APR), all of which lie on the Mumbai-Howrah and Mumbai-Katni-Vishakhapatnam main lines. Nagpur, Bilaspur, Durg and Raipur are the zone's major junctions. By 2009, SECR had added a third rail line between Durg and Bilaspur.