It was in the summer of 2002 that then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee declared that the Kashmir valley would be connected with Jammu via rail network by 2007. Almost 106 years before that, then Maharaja of Kashmir Pratap Singh mooted the same idea of connecting Kashmir with Jammu through rail. Though both the deadlines?one set by the Vajpayee government in 2002 and the other by the Maharaja of Kashmir in 1898?could not be met, the dream has inched closer to reality this year.
The railways has finally connected Jammu region with Kashmir valley through a 11.3-km-long tunnel passing through the Pir Panjal range, which stands like a thick wall between the two regions. The tunnel connects Banihal in Jammu region with Qazigund in Kashmir.
The rail link, which will ensure all-weather rail connectivity to the valley, was ready in December last year, but could not be inaugurated because of instability in the valley post Afzal Guru?s hanging. A trophy project for the railways and the UPA government, the rail line will now be inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA chief Sonia Gandhi on June 26.
The 17-km rail project, including the 11.3-km-long tunnel, named T-80, took almost seven years to complete for Railways PSU, IRCON. For the railways and even for its Austrian engineering consultant and civil works agency Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), the project was the most difficult ever undertaken.
Geo Consultants, the Austrian designing agency for the project, found the project its toughest due to the geological conditions and vulnerability of the valley. ?The Himalayas in this region are young and there are several local faults, making the designing work difficult due to the uncertain rocky nature. We have worked in Taiwan and other tough regions, but nowhere has it been so challenging,? says Dr Friedrich Prinzi, project director, Geo Consultant.
Ballast-less tracks have been used inside the tunnel, along with a three-metre-wide road for rescue operations. ?The terrain was such that we couldn’t have used boring machines due to the nature of rock. We opted for the drill and blast method, which is a bit slower but is more suited in such geological conditions. We did 60 metres tunneling a month,? says Hitesh Khanna, director (works), IRCON.
With no access roads, the first challenge for the railways was to build roads till the works sites, which also involved building small tunnels and bridges. ?The track alignment doesn’t run parallel to the existing road network. So we had to built our own roads to reach the works site,? VK Gupta, general manager, Northern Railways, tells FE.
Adds Khanna, ?T-80 is a pioneering work and a benchmark for more ambitious and longer transport tunnels in future. We did aerial surveys with new laser technique to know the area geology. The project includes many firsts in Indian infrastructure history.?
Boom town Banihal
The fortunes of the people of Banihal, otherwise a sleepy town in the narrow valley just before the Pir Panjal range in J&K, started changing in 2005 when Indian Railways started work on its most ambitious engineering project, the Pir Panjal tunnel. And, despite being the historical gateway to Kashmir, there has never been such buzz in the area.
Today, almost every household of this town has a member working for the railways, either as a driver, manual labourer, cleaner, gardener, or on any other duty. ?The area has turned into a ?Sumo town?. There are 200 people who run Sumo taxis for the railways. Around 150 are working at the railways base office and an equal number at the newly-constructed railway station. Hundreds of people have gained indirect employment,? says Khanna of IRCON.
Iqbal, who goes by his first name, is a graduate and has been employed as contractual worker with IRCON for the past few years. He says there have been a lot of opportunities in the area since the project started. ?We hope that they soon make us permanent staff. We have also requested the divisional railway manager,? he says.
As per railways estimates, the entire Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link project will give direct employment to about 7,000 local people and indirect employment to several thousands.
The national transporter has acquired around 850 hectares for the USBRL project. ?We have given permanent jobs in railways to one member each of the families from whom we have acquired more than 75% of their land. Till date, 343 persons have been given jobs,? says a Northern Railway official.
Railways is also constructing access roads that will enhance connectivity in the area. ?A total of 262 km of approach roads to work sites are to be constructed. Of this, 160 km of roads are already constructed. With completion of approach roads, more than 73 villages will get connected, which will provide road connectivity to about 1,47,000 people,? the Northern Railway official adds. Railways is spending `2,000 crore on building access roads, which will later be transferred to the state government. Transporting fruits and flowers from the valley will also become easy, fast and cheap, which will benefit the local farmers. There is already talk that increased employment in the area will help mitigate militancy. Clearly, the rail line is turning out to be a lifeline.
A track full of trivia
The first train chugged into Kashmir Valley in 2009, connecting Qazigund with Baramulla via Srinagar, making it the first island railway system in the country that was not connected with the national railway network.
The 271-km-long Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project is being undertaken in several phases and includes constructing engineering marvels such as the world?s tallest bridge and India?s longest transport tunnel.
Phase I of the project, the 25-km-long Udhampur-Katra line is almost ready and will be thrown open in August. The route will provide direct connectivity to Vaishno Devi shrine. The cost of the project is expected to be around `1,026 crore. ?The section has 38 bridges and 10 tunnels, the longest one being 3.15-km long. The project is being constructed by Northern Railways,? says VK Gupta, general manager, Northern Railways.
The 111-km-long Katra-Banihal section includes construction of the world’s tallest bridge over Chenab river and 12-km-long tunnel that will be even longer than the Pir Panjal tunnel constructed on the Banihal-Qazigund rail line. ?The bridge over Chenab would be 359 metres tall, which will make it the world’s tallest bridge. In all, there would be around 32 bridges on this line and 32 tunnels. About 80% of the section is just tunnels. The cost of the project would be around `1,300 crore,? Gupta adds.
The 1,315-metre-long Chenab bridge being constructed at the cost of `550 crore will also be developed into a tourist spot by providing a rail halt on the bridge. The construction of this bridge would involve structural steel work of about 25,000 MT and reinforcement steel of about 4,000 MT.
?The alignment on this route passes through the world’s most difficult terrain, both in terms of logistics and geological strata. The geography has metamorphic rocks that are yet to stabilise. The work will be completed by 2017,? says Gupta.
The 17-km-long Banihal-Qazigund route, which includes the 11-km-long Pir Panjal tunnel, has been completed and is ready for operations. T-80 has been constructed at a cost of `1,300 crore and the entire project of the 17-km-long route between Banihal and Qazigund cost `1,691 crore. The railway line reduces the travel distance from 35 km by road to 17 km by rail, which can now be covered in just 15 minutes.
The tunnel is at a 440m lower level than Jawahar road tunnel and will be much less vulnerable to snow. The second-longest transport tunnel in Asia, T-80 is equipped with ventilators, fire detection systems, emergency telephones and uninterrupted mobile phone connectivity.
The 118-km-long Qazigund-Baramulla section via Srinagar, which was inaugurated in 2009, was the easiest part of the project as there were no tunnels. ?But heavy bridging was required across rivers, canals and roads. The project cost came out to be `3,658 crore,? Gupta adds.
The 324-km-long route from Jammu to Baramulla in Kashmir valley, the biggest mountain railway project since independence, constitutes of 32 stations in all.
