Indian Railways has opened the country’s longest tunnel in the state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) measuring 10.96 km long.
The tunnel will connect the Kashmir Valley with the rest of the country.
The tunnel is part of the ambitious Udhampur – Srinagar – Baramulla rail link project of Northern Railways.
It was constructed by Hindustan Construction Corporation (HCC) at a cost of Rs 391 crore and took six years to complete.
It will pass through the Jammu region to the Kashmir Valley at Banihal, about 190 km from Jammu.
The engineering work included ‘construction of the tunnel having a finished width of 8.405 metres and height of 7.393 metre with a provision of three metres wide concrete road inside the tunnel throughout the length for maintenance & emergency relief purpose, and also construction of a 772m long access tunnel section’, the company said.
It is aimed to reduce travel distance between Quazigund to Banihal to only 11 km and providing ‘hassle-free travel up to Baramulla’.
HCC adopted the large scale use of New Australian Tunneling Methodology (NATM) method in India. It also used road headers for the first time in India for this project.
During surveys, eight different types of geological strata were found in the entire length of the tunnel.
The project was extremely challenging as this area falls under heavy snowfall region of J & K, where temperatures go down to -10°C in winter.
It is Austria not Australian.
Copy-paste error straight from TOI.