Exchequer District Railway

Inner Region Regional Railway

Overview
Native name	內史鐵, nups-sre′-qlik
Owner	Crown corporation
Area served	Inner Region
Transit type	Suburban rail Commuter rail
Number of lines	11
Number of stations	283
Daily ridership	2,130,000
Headquarters	Yellow House
Operation
Began operation	1969
Headway	10 – 15 minutes (peak) 20 – 30 minutes (off peak)
Technical
System length	595 mi (958 km)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Average speed	60 mph (97 km/h)
Top speed	100 mph (160 km/h)

The Inner Region Regional Railway (Shinasthana: 內史鐵, nups-sre′-qlik; abbr. IRRR) is a network offering suburban train services around Kien-k'ang, the capital city of Themiclesia. The network is named after the Inner Department, a medieval department responsible for the administration of the city and its peripheral towns.

The suburban branch lines of the two national railways, National Rail and Themiclesian & Northwest, form the foundation of IRRR's network. Suburban services were offered by both railroads since the late 19th century but became increasingly unprofitable while demand only increased. Their suburban networks were purchased by the Crown in 1967, and services since were operated by the Inner Region Transit Board under the new brand of IRRR. Two new lines have since been added, and improvements to capacity and accessibility have been implemented.

The urban terminus of most IRRR services is the Twa-ts'uk-men Station. There are multiple stations allowing transfer to National Rail and Kien-k'ang Rapid Transit. National Rail continues to offer suburban or commuter services that run on its

History

Early commuter trains

The history of suburban lines around Kien-k'ang can be traced to when its first railway line opened in 1849; an extension of the main line opened at the same time to the suburb of Qlang-qrum, though this place has since been consumed by the city's expansion. In the first railway boom of the 1850s, branch lines sprawled from main-line termini to nearby towns, expecting both to deliver goods and compete with stagecoaches running to the city. For railroads, branches were critical to increasing the usage of the main lines by bringing goods to the terminus, though passenger service was also a source of revenues.

As branch lines multiplied, a commuting lifestyle developed around the towns they served and the capital city. By 1900, there were five termini and 30 railway lines crossing Kien-k'ang, including two elevated and one underground lines later forming part of the Kien-k'ang Rapid Transit network. At the same time, the inter-city railways agglomerated into two large networks, the government-owned National Railways, and the private Themiclesian & Great Northwest Railways. Both offered services from the capital city and between them provided commuter services on over 20 branch lines that diverged from the main lines at various points. This system survived T&GN's sale of its network to the government to become an independent operator in 1948.

Post-war

The road network still in its infancy, the post-war economic boom placed unprecedented demands on the country's rail network, and lines around the capital city became particularly congested with both freight and passenger trains. The increase in commuter traffic partly owes to the policy encouraging suburbanization, which the government pursued after 1945 to reduce residential density in parts of the city infamous for crime and disease. Expectedly, new communities appeared in suburbs already well-served by railways, boosting their passenger volume and necessitating increases in services. However, because branch lines converge with main lines to reach the urban terminus, they compete with inter-city trains in shared lines and encumbered scheduling.

In 1953, T&GN rebranded its commuter trains as "Regional Express", which became controversial as the trains, stopping at every station, were hardly express, and this tactic National Rail soon emulated, calling its commuter trains "City Express". These rebrandings were in no small part efforts to beautify the outdated, cramped rolling stock that both operators employed on suburban services. National Rail regularly used coaches built for the army in wartime—these had so few amenities that even brief journeys were barely tolerable.

The terminal shared by both operators at Twa-ts'uk-men Station was experiencing traffic five times its expected capacity by 1959, much of it from morning and evening rush hour trains arriving from the suburbs every few minutes. The unsafe conditions in rush hour was tragically brought to public attention by passengers crowded off the platforms and killed by trains.

Thought the station had 20 tracks, it could not cope with both commuter and inter-city traffic. To relieve main lines and the terminus, it was planned to restructure the suburban network so as to permit commuter trains to travel independently of the main lines and release passengers at several separate stations in the city, instead of a single terminus. At these stations, it was expected that commuters would avail themselves of the rapid transit and bus services. Thus, according to Ecole, "the new routes in the city were planned to be dependent on the rapid-transit network, a progressive insight of transit integration on the part of the planners."

Various realizations of the scheme were tabled before the City in the late 50s and early 60s, but all of them implied that many new tunnels were to be built if widespread demolition in the urban core was to be avoided. With the city under pressure from the central government to extend the highway network and widen roads, the plan did not receive the city's sanction until 1963. During the 60s, the operators looked to other commuter networks and adopted the double decker train as a solution to line capacity problems: that is, if they could not feasibly run more trains, each train must carry more passengers. These trains, however, were restricted by the loading guage of the Central Junction Railway, the 7-mile underground tunnel that led to the terminus. With a height of 14 ft 6 in (4.42 m), double-decker trains were quite cramped, each level being only 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) in height.

Formation of IRRR

As an entity, the IRRR was proposed by both National Rail and T&GN at a time when both were seeking to simply their portfolios and reduce network length faced with competition from road voyage. From them, the new entity would both take over the maintenance and operation of the commuter network, which was less profitable than freight and inter-city service, and free main lines from commuter services, which meant they could run more freight and inter-city trains. Both companies were thus willing to underwrite some of the scheme's tremendous cost, estimated at $280 million in 1965. Much of this went towards eight new tunnels under the urban core, as the city was then determined to prevent the building of overhead railways, which "caused a permanent overcast on many streets".

IRRR planners required a height of 16 ft 6 in (5.03 m) throughout its network to accommodate more commodious double-decker trains. Undoubtedly, such dimensions contributed to the project's burgeoning costs, though the added capacity per train and scheduling "headroom" was warmly received by the city, which shared the belief that room for further increases in frequency was necessary in anticipation of future demands. A dedicated set of stations, within the urban centre and well-connected to the rapid-transit network, were intended to enable passengers to alight more quickly and at multiple points, rather than at the ageing Twa-ts′uk-men station, whose platforms were narrow and obstructed with dozens of structural columns.

Construction work on the new tracks necessary to make the commuter network independent of the inter-city network began in 1965, and the first line was complete by 1969. Twa-ts'uk-men Station was served by a new bank of six platforms, with ten tracks amongst them, built under the main-line platforms. Other stations were built at a shallower depth, though modifications to the rapid-transit stations were found necessary to enable convenient transfers; these included more waiting room and, in some places, increases in service frequencies.

Infrasturcture

Stations

To avoid disturbance to the operating structures above, which by this point also included two rapid-transit tunnels, the new platforms were dug at 45 metres underground. An open platform layer at Twa-ts'uk-men with few pillars and high ceilings, though sought by architects, could not be budgeted, but the supporting columns were placed in such a way so as not to disrupt ingress and egress; transit times to the rapid-transit network were to be minimized by additional tunnels connecting them directly.

See also

• Themiclesia
• Rail transport in Themiclesia