Mysuru: In a first of its kind operation in the country, 40 Indian and six foreign workers, besides officers of the South Western Railways are participating in the translocation of a 228-year-old armoury that belonged to the Tiger of Mysore, Tipu Sultan.
The translocation that will be carried out using the Unified Jacking System developed by an Indo- American company, PLF-Wolfe , is expected to cost Rs 13 crore and will clear 20 meters of the railways’ doubling line project between Mysuru and Bengaluru.
“By March 4 the rollers will be inserted under the beams and the armoury moved to a temporary new location. It will be moved to its permanent location, 100 meters away from its present site, by May,” said sources.
Steel beams underneath the structure in preparation for the translocation of Tipu’s armoury this Saturday. (Photo: DC)
Said to one of the eight built by Tipu Sultan, the armoury is a protected monument under the Department of Heritage, Archaeology and Museum. Used for storing gun powder, and military equipment, it was built with lime and stone mortar, using a processed mixture of eggs with shells, jaggery, and soap nut, going by heritage expert, Eechanur Kumar.
“It is a rare experience for us to do work of this magnitude. The foreign engineer involved in the project said he had never seen a structure as hard as this one. Although the technology involved has been around in the USA for over a century, it is being used for the first time in India,” said an engineer working on the project.
With the armoury’s shifting, the doubling of the railway line over 132 kms will be completed by the end of April and the new tracks commissioned by May, 12 years after the project began, according to South Western Railway sources
The railways received clearance from DHAM and the Archaeological Survey of India to shift the armoury when Mr Mallikarjun Kharge was the railway minister in 2014. While the Institution of Engineers suggested its translocation in one piece, the first tender did not receive any response. Finally, the tender was finalised by the end of 2014 and the work on the translocation was commissioned on January 8 this year.
But the delay over land acquisition, allocation of funds and translocation of Tipu’s armoury has proved costly for the railways as the cost of the doubling work has shot up from around Rs 440 crores in 2005 to Rs 880 crore now.
The doubling of the line is expected to cut travel time by 15 minutes for passenger trains between the two cities.
