This description is from "Gomoh loco shed and CLW trip record" by Samit Roychoudhury.

[9] During the middle of the nineteenth century, Carr, Tagore and Company transported coal from Narayankuri ghat on the Damodar River to Kolkata, then known as Calcutta.

In order to capture the lucrative coal transport business, East Indian Railway, extended the railway track that had been laid between Kolkata and Hooghly to Raniganj in 1855 and up to Asansol in July 1863.

While the Searsol Raj, then the zamindar in the Raniganj area, refused to provide the land, the Panchakot Raj, then functioning from Kashipur, agreed to provide the land in Shergarh, of which Asansol was then a part in 1863–64, East Indian Railway purchased a large area of jungle land from the Panchakot Raj, thereby initiating the development of Asansol as an industrial area.

With the completion of the Sitarampur–Gaya–Mughalsarai Grand Chord in 1901 (formally inaugurated in 1906 and finally opened in 1907), the Kolkata–Delhi rail distance became even shorter, and Asansol started functioning as the junction station of the main and chord lines, as Sitarampur, the actual junction, near Asansol, is a comparatively smaller station.

[12][13] While momentous developments were taking place in connecting Delhi and Kolkata by rail, Bengal Nagpur Railway extended its tracks to the Asansol coal belt in 1887, thus connecting Adra with Asansol.

On the Grand Chord line its jurisdiction extends up to the distant signal of Pradhankhunta.

[18] 228 trains (including weeklies and bi-weeklies) originate or pass through Asansol railway station.

Halt of 12301/02 Howrah - New Delhi Rajdhani Express was provided at Asansol Jn on request of politician Babul Supriyo in May 2018.