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In 1986 the metre gauge network ran to almost 24,000 route km or 39% of the country's total and steam still handled much of the traffic. There was more variety than on the broad gauge with a handful of older types still in use alongside the standard YP Class Pacifics and YG Class Mikados.
The metre gauge system was developed from the late 19th Century onwards to bring the railway to areas where broad gauge was considered uneconomic or impractical and stretched to 25,550 route km by 1971, 42% of the total. The network consisted of two groups of lines, one stretching from Assam in the far east, along India's northern border with Nepal then south through Rajasthan to Gujarat, the other covering much of southern India. A long north-south route linked the two groups through what was otherwise broad gauge territory. Some lines had already been converted to broad gauge in the 1970s and 1980s and Project Unigauge to convert most of the remaining metre and narrow gauge lines started in 1992. By 2023 only 1,345 km of metre gauge remained, a mere 2% of the total.
