Every year Indian Railways moves the raw material of the economy — coal to power plants, ore and limestone to steel and cement works, fertiliser to farms, containers to ports. This tracks freight loading: the total originating tonnage the network carries each financial year, and the commodities that make it up. Watch the tonnage climb from just over 1,000 MT a decade ago to a record 1,670 MT — and see how far coal still dominates the load. Ministry of Railways data.
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FY2025-26FY2026-27provisional (year-end quarter)
Freight loaded, year by year
What you’re looking at. “Freight loading” is the originating tonnage Indian Railways carries — counted once, where each consignment starts — in million tonnes (MT) per financial year (April–March). It is the headline the Ministry reports each year and a clean read on the goods economy: coal for power, ore and fluxes for steel, cement, fertiliser, foodgrains and containerised trade all ride the rails. Coal alone is about half the load, which is why railway freight tracks power demand so closely. The What it carries view breaks the latest year down by commodity. Figures are the Ministry’s freight-loading numbers; the current year’s latest month is provisional. Freight loading counts tonnes originating, not tonne-kilometres, so it does not capture how far each consignment travels.
Source: Ministry of Railways — freight loading (originating tonnage); historical years from the Indian Railways Year Book, recent years from the Ministry’s year-end statements · PolityPolicy · India, in Numbers · by Tushar Gupta
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