Connecting Kashmir and Kanyakumari by train a reality soon, special Vande Bharat trains to run on route

Indian Railways has successfully installed all 96 cables on Anji Khad Bridge, country’s first cable-stayed railway bridge

The dream of connecting Kashmir with Kanyakumari through train network is inching closer with each passing day with the Railways successfully installing all 96 cables on Anji Khad Bridge, country’s first cable-stayed railway bridge.

Last month Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had announced that the railway line connecting Kashmir with the rest of the country will be ready for passengers by the end of this year with special ‘Vande Bharat’ trains to carry them in the region.

Anji Khad Bridge which is part of the crucial Udampur-Srinagar-Baramulla (USBRL) railway project is being built in the challenging terrain of young fold mountains of Himalayas in extreme geographical conditions.

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The project director said that history has been created when all the 96 cables of this bridge were fully installed successfully in a record time of 11 months. Terming the Bridge as an engineering marvel, he said that the first cable-stayed bridge on Indian Railway will connect Katra to Reasi in Jammu & Kashmir on the USBRL.

The asymmetrical cable-stayed bridge crosses the deep gorges of Anji river, a tributary of river Chenab. The bridge connects tunnel T2 on the Katra side and tunnel T3 on the Reasi side. The bridge has a single line railway track and a 3.75m wide service road.

Baramulla to Udhampur rail line project having a length of 272 km was started as a national project in 2002, for connecting Kashmir with the rest of the country. The 137 km long Banihal-Baramulla section was made operational in October 2009.

Next came the 25 km long Udhampur - Katra section which began functioning from July 2014. The work on the 110 km long Katra-Banihal stretch which started in June 2013 is expected to be completed by the year end.

The toughest job in the USBRL project was construction of a bridge over river Chenab. Taller than Paris’ Eiffel Tower, the highest single-arch railway bridge in the world, located between Bakkal and Kauri in the Reasi district, the Chenab bridge has reportedly cleared all the necessary tests so far, including high-velocity winds test, earthquake-prone test, and hydrological impacts due to rise in water level.