International Railroad Discussion > How does freight traffic in India work?

From what I have seen (in video) Indian frieght trains are about 60 cars long, and always are unit trains. I'm wondering how that network does unit trains of box cars, for example. How could they manage to get boxcar traffic in such uniform, large quantities?
I found a website called "Indian Railway Employee" that has some interesting info:

----------------------------Mughalsarai yard – Largest Marshalling Yard in India and Longest in Asia

• Length of about 12.5 km.
• Sub Yards - Down Central Yard, Down Receiving Yard, Marshalling Yard with Hump provided with Pneumatic Retarders, Down Departure yard, Up Central Yard, Up Inter Yard & Up Departure yard .
• Yard has also a Electric Locomotive Shed (holding 147 locomotives), Diesel Locomotive (holding 53 locomotives), Wagon ROH shed .
• On an average more than 210 freight trains pass through Mughalsarai yard every day.
• Handles 1500 wagons daily.
• With the discontinuance of piecemeal loading the traffic in the yard has substantially reduced.During its peak the yard handled 5,000 wagons daily.

----------------------------

Does anyone know when it was that the whole network discountined piecemeal loading? Seems like some railroads in the US would love to pull that off if they only could.

I believe they did this starting in the late 1980s as part of Rajiv Gandhi's railway reforms.  About the same time as they retired steam.