Up and Down - Demystified

There has been a lot of confusion and worse, misunderstanding on the words 'Up and Down' used in Railways parlance. Let me attempt to decrypt them for all of us to understand better! Remember, every point generalised herein has an exception.

To begin with, the 'Up and Down' refers to the tracks and the trains separately. Eg. A Down train can travel in Down direction paths to a junction and then take Up direction path from there to another station.

Paths:

Railways trace their origins to England, where all tracks leading out of London were called Down direction paths and all tracks leading to London were called Up direction paths. Similarly, when Railway Companies were setting up tracks in India, all tracks that were going out of their headquarters or junction points were Down tracks. Eg.:

Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR): Bombay to Pune

Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway (BBCIR): Bombay to Baroda/ Ahmedabad

Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway: Madras to Mangalore/ Bangalore

Branch lines and spurs going out of a junction point are called as Down line from the junction point. Eg.

GIPR: Daund to Baramati

MSMR: Bangarpet to Marikuppam

The only exception was the East India Railway, headquartered at Calcutta. Since their railway lines were laid along the upstream of Ganga River and people have been used to steamer services along the river with Upstream travel being denoted as Up, they named tracks originating out of Calcutta as Up and tracking coming to Calcutta as Down.

Usually, the km markings along the tracks (chainage) increases in Down direction and decreases in Up direction.

Trains:

The general convention is it is always 1 Down and 2 Up (odd numbers for Down trains and even numbers for Up trains). So, the Madras Mail from Bombay to Madras, run by GIPR was 9 Down (Bombay VT to Madras Central) and 10 Up.

As you may be able to observe now, a train can take multiple types of tracks along the way. Let us take 121 Dn Tamil Nadu Express (now 12621) as an example. The train for its entire journey is 'Down'. However, the tracks differ as explained below:

Madras Central to Vijayawada Jn. Down. (MSMR lines radiating from MAS)

Vijayawada Jn. to Sewagram bypass Down. (GIPR lines radiating from Bombay/ Wardha Jn.)

Sewagram bypass to Nagpur Jn. Down. (GIPR lines radiating from Bombay)

Nagpur Jn. to Itarsi Jn. Up. (GIPR lines radiating from Bombay, branching towards Nagpur at Itarsi Junction point)

Itarsi Jn. to New Delhi Down. (GIPR lines radiating from Bombay towards Delhi Jn.)

You may have to study the history of tracks and trains to understand these. For eg. 12607 Lalbagh Express is maintained by South Western Railways/ Bangalore Division. However, the number 12607 is given for its Madras - Bangalore leg and not vice versa. It was due to the fact that this train was introduced by Southern Railway when Bangalore division was with SR and not SWR.

Trains switch their divisional loyalties often, so it is always recommended to do a thorough review of the history before concluding Up and Down.

Please share your specific questions (if any) as comments. I will try to answer/ clarify as early as possible.

-Ara.

Credits: IRFCA Website and DSP Anirudh.