Coal, steel and the railway
Asansol sits at the heart of the Raniganj coalfield, where commercial coal mining in India began, and the railway arrived because of that coal. The East Indian Railway pushed its line from Howrah into this region in the 1860s, and Asansol station, officially Asansol Junction (code ASN), dates from 1864. It became the hub of one of India's oldest industrial belts, with coal mines, the Burnpur steel works and, at nearby Chittaranjan, the Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, one of India's major locomotive factories.
Five directions from Asansol
- Bardhaman–Asansol section, east to Bardhaman and Howrah
- New Delhi–Howrah main line, the trunk route through the coal belt
- Asansol–Gaya section, part of the Grand Chord towards Delhi
- Asansol–Patna section, the older route via Jhajha into Bihar
- Asansol–Tatanagar–Kharagpur line, south-west to the steel city of Jamshedpur
Early electric traction
Because of its importance for coal traffic, the Asansol area was electrified early, between 1957 and 1962, among the first main-line sections in India to get electric traction.
The station today
ASN has 7 platforms, each about 620 metres long, on 11 tracks, at an elevation of about 96 metres. It is graded NSG-2 and is the headquarters of Eastern Railway's Asansol division, which runs much of the region's dense coal and passenger traffic.
Who uses Asansol
Rajdhani, Duronto and express trains between Howrah and Delhi stop here, as do trains to Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. Local trains connect the mining towns of the belt. Our train schedule page lists which services call at ASN.
Around the coal belt
- Dhanbad, India's coal capital, is about an hour west by train.
- The Maithon and Panchet dams on the Damodar valley are popular day trips by road.
- Chittaranjan, the locomotive-works town, has its own station on the line towards Jhajha.