Bamunigaon (Assam), Aug 26: The Indian railways’ largest and most ambitious project in the northeast — a 124-km new track in south Assam and the Rs 6.37-billion bridge over the Brahmaputra — is ready for use.
The mega project, which provides the NF railway a second railway track through south Assam, is officially being commissioned on Dec 31 this year. ''We propose to run the first passenger train on Jan 1 as we have already run more than 50 goods train so far,'' Chief Engineer of the project, Tribhuvan Gupta, told the media. The Commissioner of Railway Safety after a thorough inspection had authorised the NF Railway to open the new line.
The new line is crucial for the NF railway as the existing Bongaigaon-Rangiya-Guwahati section is running at 135 per cent utilization braving continued attack by the terrorists as well as fury of flood.
Rajdhani, Sarajghat to run on this line: ''Now we have a second option. This will be the second line for that stretch. The Rajdhani Express and Saraighat Express will initially run on the section beside the goods train taking off the load from the existing lines. Besides, this area is less flood-prone than the north bank and Bodo militants are not active here,'' said deputy Chief Engineer of the project Monoj Khan.
Train communication with the northeast have repeatedly been disturbed either by the Bodo ultras or the flood de-linking the region for days, making life miserable for both the stranded passengers as well as railway authorities. The foundation for the project was laid way back in 1983 but fund availability, land acquisition, environmental problem and finally
law and order problem had pushed the project for 17 years. However, this remains the longest newly-constructed rilway track since the British left the network way back in 1947, claimed Gupta.
Narnarayan Setu too to be completed: Meanwhile, the main 2.3-km Narnarayan Setu of the river Brahmaputra was opened in 1998 but the railway bridge was not used properly as the track was incomplete. ''Only the communication work is to be done now and by another one and half month that will also
be over,'' he added. There are 348 bridges on the section of which 53 are major ones
having 14 stations in the entire stretch. ''We have constructed 519 quarters and for the first time continuous welded rail have been used in NF railway removing the fish-plates altogether.” ''Security is our biggest concern. Two of our officers were kidnapped, one supervisor was killed besides innumerable extortion threats and notices were served to the contractors and railway staff working at sites,'' said Khan, whose predecessor N. Lalwani was
kidnapped in Dec 1998 and released later.
— UNI
