Railways have been significant to the history of modern India in several ways. Railways were the centerpiece of inter-connected economic, political, social and ecological transformations in the country. Understanding modern Indian history, therefore, requires knowledge of its railway history. Some of the conceptual, methodological, and substantive issues that face historians as they try to reconstruct and evaluate India’s railways are discussed and strengths and weaknesses in the existing historiography, related to central themes in India’s railways, are presented.
