The Hindu : National : Trains to Vaishno Devi base camp from next year

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Trains to Vaishno Devi base camp from next year

53-km-long Jammu-Udhampur line already operational
Work on Udhampur-Katra line under way

New Delhi: Pilgrims to the Vaishno Devi shrine will be able to travel directly to the Katra base camp when the Udhampur-Katra rail line becomes operational next year.

While the Katra station is almost ready, work on the Udhampur-Katra line is under way and expected to be commissioned by December 2012, a senior Northern Railway official involved with the project said.

The 53-km-long Jammu-Udhampur rail line is already operational. Once the 25-km-long Udhampur-Katra line, part of the Kashmir rail link project, is operational, the trains can directly come to Katra from anywhere, he said.

Katra town in Reasi is the base camp for pilgrims to the Vaishno Devi shrine, where an estimated 10 million devotees pay obeisance every year.

The Udhampur-Katra route, estimated to cost Rs. 960 crore, passes through inhospitable terrain, making it an extremely challenging engineering project. It cost about Rs.70 crore to construct one km of the tunnel.

The official said the 25-km-long route consists of seven tunnels and about 30 small and big bridges, including a bridge taller than the Qutub Minar. “The total length of seven tunnels is 12 km on the Udhampur-Katra rail route. While construction of five tunnels has been completed, work is going on in two tunnels, T1 and T3.”

The project got delayed because of a problem in T1 and T3 tunnels. “A portion of 3-km-long T1 tunnel collapsed due to seepage, causing a setback to the project,” the official said.

The construction of T3 tunnel also faced a problem due to the constant flow of the trapped water in the construction area.

“The problem has been rectified now and the tunnelling work is nearing completion,” he said, adding that “the New Austrian Tunnelling Method is being used for all tunnels in the rail route.”

Work on the bridges are also in the final stage. The 85-metre-high bridge at Jhajjar, is the tallest bridge among a total of 30 bridges on the Udhampur-Katra rail route.

Since the area is a quake-prone and high wind velocity zone, all safety aspects have been taken into account before designing these bridges, the official said. —PTI

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