| Railroad Name: | South Western Railway |
| Logo Filename: | File:Shortened form of South Western Railway Zone.jpg |
| System Map: | Indianrailwayzones-numbered.png |
| Locale: | Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra |
| Predecessor Line: | Southern Railway zone South Central Railway zone Central Railway zone |
| Gauge: | Broad gauge (1676mm, 5'6") |
| Old Gauge: | Meter gauge |
| Hq City: | Rail Soudha, Gadag Road Hubballi Karnataka |
| Website: | SWR Official Website |
The South Western Railway (SWR) is one of the 19 railway zones in India, headquartered at Hubballi in Karnataka State. SWR was created from carving out the routes from Southern Railways, South Central Railways and Central Railways in 2003.
The South Western Railway zone came into existence on 1 April 2002 by bifurcating Mysuru and Bengaluru divisions from Southern Railway along with Hubballi division from South Central Railway. It is headquartered at Hubballi and comprises three divisions namely Hubballi, Mysuru, and Bengaluru. The fourth division at Kalaburagi was slated to be the fourth division which was supposed to be carved out from Hubli, Secunderabad, Guntakal and Solapur divisions. Currently the divisional office at Kalaburagi is on hold due to operational constraints.[1]
South Western Railway covers most of the railway lines in the state of Karnataka and Goa except the Konkan Railway line, parts of Sri Sathya Sai district and Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh, Krishnagiri district, parts of Dharmapuri district and Tirupathur district of Tamil Nadu and parts of Sangli district and Solapur district of Maharashtra. SWR also operates and maintains Mangalore–Hassan–Mysore line railway track.
The Mysuru Division of South Western Railways will be designated as "Digital Division" after fully adopting its current technology harnessing programme. The government of India had asked Railways divisions to cut red tape and reduce paperwork in offices. All the officials will adopt technologies like WhatsApp and Google Drive to share reports and other documents. This will save a lot of papers being used for circulating reports as done currently. Two web-based helplines have been launched so that digitised information can be shared among different officials. The inspection reports regarding maintenance, passenger amenities, cleanliness, electronics, and communication, etc. will be managed by a new software which is under construction now. These measures will cut down redundant works, reduce number of registers and reports maintained by officials, reduce paper consumption and improve the efficiency and celerity of operations.[2]
Since 2007, the SWR is entirely Indian gauge. SWR has 229 WDG4, 24 WAP-7, 62 WAG-9HC and WDP-4 locomotives in use.