Valley rail project faces bottleneck

NEW DELHI
Sept. 25: It’s a strategic railways line project that is posing not only significant engineering but also security challenges to the Indian Railways, a major portion of it being located in the militancy-affected Kashmir Valley. So, even a short railway line stretch of 18 km, ready for inauguration, is a matter of great importance for the Railways and the people of the Valley.
The 18-km-long Qazigund-Anantnag stretch in south Kashmir is ready but for now awaits a formal inauguration to enable a train to regularly chug along the tracks. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s name is being mentioned as the likely chief guest for this high profile project of national importance, railway officials are chary of giving any definite date for the inauguration as it all depends on who the chief guest will be.
All that Northern Railways general manager Vivek Sahai would say is, “We are working on the time-table. The timings will have to be changed”. He said that the current speed of the train on the stretches that are functional is between 75 km to 90 km per hour. He said the Railways would like to increase the average speed to 100 km per hour and added saying “We are working on that and it will happen soon.”
Regarding the 148 km Katra-Qazigund stretch, work on which was halted in 2008 after serious problems of alignment arose, Mr Sahai said that work should resume in the next two or three weeks. He said surveys and studies would be done and work will resume on sections where there is no confusion.