India's longest railway tunnel in jammu and kashmir

Feb. 3, 2011 - PRLog -- The work on country’s longest railway tunnel, coming up in Jammu and Kashmir as a part of prestigious Udhampur-Katra-Qazigund project, is all set to miss the completion target as shale rock has badly affected momentum at a time when only 600 meters portion was required to be drilled.

Official sources told that keeping in view pace of work on drilling of 11 kilometer long tunnel between Qazigund and Banihal ever since its beginning some years back, the Northern Railways had set March 2011 target for completion of this daunting task.
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But much to the surprise of all, shale rock stalked the engineers and workforce at a time when only 600 meters portion was required to be drilled for completion of work, they said while disclosing that such a problem was never confronted on rest of 10.4 kilometers portion, where tunnel stands completed at the present moment.

"The intensity of work getting slowed down can be gauged from the fact that as against 150 to 180 meters drilling per month, only 25 to 30 meters area is being drilled at present", they said, adding "the rock is not only shale but is also containing some quantity of water which is further hampering the work and increasing the quantity of the primary support for rock bolting".

When contacted, Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Northern Railways, R K Gupta said, "though the work has slowed down yet there is no need to be worried about the completion of tunnel as consultants are already at the site for necessary guidance to the workforce and the work is being carried out with all necessary and requisite safety measures".

To a question, he said that completion of the tunnel would get delayed by few months, adding "as we are working 1100 meter below the earth surface even geologists can have only interpretations about the rock conditions and accuracy rate of such interpretations is very limited".
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Responding to another question, Mr Gupta said that tunnel is being drilled much below the snowline of the Qazigund area in order to ensure free movement of the trains even during extreme weather conditions, adding this is going to be the largest railway tunnel between two stations in the country.

The total distance between Qazigund and Banihal railway stations is 17 kilometers and only 6 kilometers is in open area—five kilometers towards Qazigund side and one kilometer towards Banihal.

Meanwhile, Mr Gupta, who arrived here this morning, carried out inspection of bridge being constructed over Ban Ganga on Udhampur-Katra-Reasi railway line. One pier of the bridge has already been constructed while as work on second was going on with required pace.

"Instead of conventional practice of constructing piers, we are carrying out concreting work with new methodology that too round the clock for early completion of the bridge", the CAO said, adding "the bridge assumes importance as it has tunnels on both ends".

He disclosed that 30 engineers and officers of the Northern Railways, Konkan Railways, Chief Bridge Engineering Organization of the Railways and Research Design and Standard Organization of the Rlys were given training about British Standard Code (BS5400) to be adopted by the contractors for wielding relating to the world’s highest railway bridge on River Chenab at Kouri.
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The 3-day training programme was conducted by TWI of UK through its franchise Tata Projects Limited.

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