Jolarpet - Railways

Railways

Jolarpet Railway Junction is one of the biggest Railway Junction in Tamil Nadu State. It connects the states of Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, which is a major cause of the town’s development. The presence of a State Highway adds advantage to the town.Thus, the town takes in the advantage of both road and rail.

The Mass Transport in Jolarpet is Indian railways apart from the Tamil Nadu transport corporation buses.Jolarpet is one of the oldest town in south India.It is the second largest Railway Junction in vellore district,next to Vellore-Katpadi Junction. This place is the crossroads for south west & south east bound trains.Trains from north and east India should pass by this way to Kochi-Coimbatore-Bangalore-Erode-Madurai and main railway It has the Second Largest Railway Yard in Asia.Per day 121 trainspass through Jolarpet.They have a centre for southern railway to repair goods compartments .. The history of Jolarpettai Junction goes back to 1860s. When Madras Railways is started the rail started running from Royapuram to Wallajah Road, which latter extended to Arakkonam. In the mean time rail line work was started in 1864 in the Jolarpettai - Bangalore Contonement route in which Bangalore mail started its journey in 1868. The Brindavan Express when introduced in the late 1960s was considered one of the fastest train at that time which crosses the Jolarpettai - Bangalore cantonment section in 1hour 30 min. This shows how people worked in this part of railways those days.

Jolarpet Junction is one of the biggest junction in the Indian Railways and is the only station in Asia having sixteen tracks. This Junction handles about 60 passenger trains daily of which few trains originate from this Junction notable one is the popularly called JP express(Yelagiri Exp) which is now originating from Tirupattur. This Junction doesn't satisfies the norms for the status of junction which actually has to connect all the four direction but connecting only three direction Salem, Bangalore and Chennai. This will be soon compensated by the proposed Tiruvannamalai Route as well as another route proposed by the government Jolarpet Junction to Hosur via Krishnagiri. After upgrading the next station Tirupattur as Junction, the traffic in JTJ has reduced to a certain extent. But after that many trains made up their correct time due to the relief congestion occurred in this point. Jolarpettai Junction is one of the Class A junctions in the Southern Railways which comes under Chennai Division. This junction has all the facilities of workshop, shelter for the goods trains. This junction has the ticket counter in the first floor on the bridge. This junction has two bridges, one with steps, and another with a ramp which connects the two villages of the town, Kodiyur and Eadayampatti. Since 121 trains pass per day at average some of trains do not stop due to rail traffic congestion such as Nilgiri Express (daily), Mangalore Fast Express (daily), Trivandrum Mail (daily) and weekly Express Tirupati, Coimbatore Express, Mangalore-Sangatrachi Express, Swarna Jayanthi Express, VIA Tirupattur weekly Express Vivek Express, Madurai-Dwarka Express, Velankanni-vasco da gama express, Hubli Express.