🧞♂️ SpotGenie Fact, Rudrastra: India’s Longest Freight Train (Trial Run)
Rudrastra (Rudra-Astra) is India’s longest freight train, a 4.5 km trial run in August 2025 with 354 wagons and 7 locomotives. Learn the engineering, route, and purpose behind this freight milestone.
🕵️♂️ SpotGenie Fact
What stretches longer than 40 football fields, needs seven locomotives to move, and takes minutes to pass a station?
Meet Rudrastra, a freight behemoth that briefly turned India’s rails into its longest moving conveyor: ~4.5 km of wagons linked together in a single trial run.
🔎 Deep Dive
- What happened: East Central Railways successfully conducted a trial run of a 4.5-kilometre freight train named Rudra-Astra / Rudrastra in August 2025.
- Key specs: The train comprised 354 wagons and was hauled by 7 locomotives, covering ~401 km in a test run from Ganjkhwaja (Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya / DDU division) towards coal sidings in Jharkhand, averaging ~40–45 km/h.
- Why it matters: The formation tested combining multiple rakes to improve freight throughput, reduce rake turnaround and boost coal logistics efficiency on major corridors, potentially transforming bulk freight economics on Indian Railways.
- How it compares: This exceeds the earlier record-holder Super Vasuki (~3.5 km, ~295 wagons) and represents a new national/Asian milestone for freight-train length in trials.
Caveat: This was a trial run/experiment (operational logistics tests). Long runs like this are usually broken into segments for unloading or safety and may not initially run as a regular scheduled service in this full formation. Treat the claim as record/trial rather than a routine daily operation.
🧩 Quick Trivia
- The 4.5 km train took about 7 minutes to clear a station platform while passing.
- Wagons were split at designated sidings en route for unloading, the mega-train concept reduces shunting and increases line capacity when managed correctly.
🧭 Other SpotGenie Facts
- 🔗 India’s First Underwater Metro Tunnel
- 🔗 India’s Longest Expressway (Delhi–Mumbai)
- 🔗 India's Longest Sea Bridge
- 🔗 SpotGenie Gyaan, Electric Vehicle Ecosystem
- 🔗 Get SpotGenie, Smart QR Sticker for Every Vehicle
Follow us on:
🅾 Instagram |
ⓕ Facebook |
𝕏 X |
▶️ YouTube |
🟢 WhatsApp
