Kashmir Railway Project: Development of a Construction Project

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"It is addition of another chapter to the history of Indian Railways and Kashmir's national rail project, as the first trial diesel mobile unit coach on Tuesday left for Kashmir's Budgam railway station by taking a road route and not a train track from Jammu railway station"

- Shiv Ram, Divisional Mechanical Engineer, Northern Railways

In May 2011, The Indian government announced that the country's longest railway tunnel (11 Km) connecting Qazigund in Kashmir with Banihal in Jammu region and passing through the Pir Panjal mountain range would be operational in 2012. This was a part of the larger ambitious project undertaken by the government to realize its dream of connecting Kashmir with the rest of the country by train. Speaking on the engineering challenge, Northern Railway chief administrative officer, Chahatey Ram, said, "We are making the rail line operational in phases due to various problems. The work is really a very challenging one because of the fragile geology and steep topography".

The Indian Railways took on one of its most important and difficult challenges when it decided to start the project of building a railroad connection through the Himalayan foothills to link Kashmir with the rest of India. The main objective of this project, also known as the Kashmir Railway Project (KRP), was to provide an alternative and more reliable transportation system to the people of Kashmir than the existing mode of traveling by road. Officially, this track was named the Jammu-Udhampur-Katra-Qazigund-Baramulla link (JUSBRL). The unique features of this line, according to observers, were the presence of a major earthquake zone, extreme environmental conditions in terms of temperature, and the most extreme geological profile throughout the entire terrain.

Once the KRP was completed, it would be the only broad gauge mountain line existing in India. After construction of the 345 km railway track was over, it would connect the national capital New Delhi with the capital of Jammu and Kashmir via a direct train line stretching over 900 km (560 miles). Some experts lauded the initiatives of the Indian Railway and the way it had overcome some of the challenges associated with the project. Once accomplished, it would be an engineering miracle, they said. However, the project also came in for criticism on several fronts. Some experts believed that it had been bungled at the planning stage itself. Some observers felt that there were several more challenges that it would have to overcome and that achieving the feat by the extended deadline (2017) would be difficult.

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