Construction of Tunnel T-49A on Dharam-Qazigund Section of USBRL
Dr. Rakesh Kumar Khali, Vice President Operations-Tunnel & UG Works, G R Infraprojects, and Sharanappa Yalal, Cluster Head, J&K, Hindustan Construction Company, highlight the planning process, execution challenges, innovations, introduction of additional adits, simultaneous working of various activities, and the extremely poor road conditions faced, despite which the supply chain management proved to be the key to the project’s success.
Picture courtesy: Twitter/Northern RailwayA number of challenging tunnelling projects, are under- construction across India, to connect significant but remote places to the rest of the country. With an intent to ease the day–to-day life of the people of Jammu and Kashmir and to connect them through a railway network to the world outside the valley, it has become necessary to create a passage through the mountains. The Indian Railways decided to connect the people of this valley through all the weather conditions. Hence the most economic rail linking project – the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link Project (USBRL) is constructed. The entire track passes through an insurmountably adverse Himalayan geology. At least 70% of the track includes a series of tunnels between Udhampur and Qazigund. The length of the tunnels ranges between a few hundred meters to 12.78 kms. The first longest length of the Tunnel is 11.20 km. The Pir Panjal Tunnel (T-80) was commissioned in 2013 and is fully operational. Another of the longest railway tunnel in the series of this project is the T-49, with a length of 12.78 km, surpassing the length of the previously built longest tunnel – the T-80 Tunnel.
