Konkan Railway has made big plans to celebrate 25 years since some of the best engineers in the country constructed the 741 kilometre line — possibly the biggest railway endeavour since Independence — in 1990. The most ambitious part of the 25-year tribute is to build a state-of-the-art Tunneling Technology Institute at Goa, an apt gift from a rail line which has 91 tunnels — totaling 84 kilometres — on its route.
Which are the tunnels KR has worked for?
KR has also completed around 22 km of tunnels in Jammu & Kashmir as part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla project. KR in the years past has worked on the tunneling and ventilation of the Mumbai-Pune Expressway as well as a water tunnel in Amdhra Pradesh for irrgation.
Are tunnels necessary in other projects?
Speaking to dna, BP Tayal, chairman-managing director of KR, said, "It will be a true gift from KR to the nation. At the moment there are no institutes in the country that are teaching advanced tunneling technology and we have to depend on foreign experts. At the same time, the demand for tunneling in railways, especially in Jammu & Kashmir and the north-east, in hydro-electric power projects, underground metro lines and even highways like the one coming up in Kashmir, will be immense. So, having a state-of-the-art institute will help the country is a big way."
Money set aside for the preliminary activities that will go into the creation of the institute is in the range of Rs5 crore, said officials.
What are the other activities line up?
Apart from the tunnel technology institute, more than 50 activities have been lined up over the next few months, said officials. A section of officials are hoping that the 25-year celebrations — that too under a railway minister who hails from the Konkan — will see the ministry granting sanction for the long overdue electrification and track doubling plans for the railway line.
A KR proposal to electrify its 741-km route between Roha and Thokur at a cost of Rs720 crore was cleared by Prabhu on November 23 last year. A Rs1,500 crore doubling survey was approved by the KR board of directors on October 29 last year and it was been sent to the railway board.
