KASHMIR EXPRESS

The dream of local kashmiri Shahrukh Khan's dancing on the tunes of "Chaiya Chaiya" song on the roof of the train is quite far ahead. The Kashmir railway project which started in 1994 is still not complete,.Its deadline of completion was August 2007 but it has again been post phoned till 2009 . The irony is that the Banihal tunnel is not finished yet and thus we can say that the job won't be done till 2011.

This project is very complex ,more complex than Einstein's Train experiment. Here we don't have a high speed train moving in a straight line, a lady , man and two lightening striking bolts. But in this 290 km line we are faced by extreme cold , heavy snow, rough ziz zag ziz zag terrain and presence of major earthquake zones.

Back in Bangalore The metro rail project started couple of days back and it would completely change the whole outlook of the famous Brigade road which is also known as MG road.

Constructing the kashmir railway line is one of the biggest engineering challenges but China has already achieved this feat by constructing the China-Tibet railway line which climbs up to 5000mt above sea level and passes through the frozen ground . China also become the Bullet train nation recently, this train runs at the speed of 250 km/hour and can go higher also. One of the challenge for Kashmir rail route is that it has to pass through the mighty Pir Panjal range which stand at 15000feet high.

The route includes many tunnels , via ducts and bridges.It will pass through 158 bridges and 20 tunnels among which the longest tunnel is 11 km . This means that 80 percent of the route comes under these bridges and inside the tunnels. To construct both the North and South Section of the 11 km Banihal tunnel, approx $120 million would be spent.

One of the biggest engineering challenge is to construct the Bridge which has to pass through the river Chenab. It has to be 1315 m long and 359 m above river bed making it the highest railway bridge in the world. This bridge will be 35 mt higher than the tip of Eiffel tower . Cor-ten steel would be used for its construction as then there is no need to paint the bridge and it is environment friendly. About 26000 tons of steel would be used for its construction. The design of the bridge is quite similar to New River Gorge Bridge in Fayette ville, New west Virginia, US. AFCONS with Ultra Engineering (South Korea) will design and construct the Chenab Bridge for Approx $130 million.

The Tunnels will be constructed Using New Austrian Tunneling Method which involves the use of geological stress of the surrounding rock mass to stablize the tunnel itself. Due to the rough terrain the Kashmir Express cannot run like the FrenchTGV's . The maximum speed allotted to it is 100km per hour . Gammon India with Archirodon Construction (South Africa) will build one of the bridges called the Anji Khad Bridge for Approx $100 million.

Going back into the History Maharaja Pratap Singh first set the proposal of the railway line in the year 1898. Then the British wanted it to be constructed. Interestingly it was planned that the trains would run by electric-power even in that time period as they wanted to use mountain streams as a source of hydro-electric power.

We are waiting for the day when we will hear the hissing sound of hot Samovar tea being served to the passengers and who knows they will be enjoying the 36 course meal of waazwan inside the train .