Title - Banihal-Qazigund rail link to be thrown open to public soon

The section will halve the distance between Banihal-Quazigund from 35 km to 17 km.; will ensure faster and cheaper travel to the commuters.Railway’s infrastructure marvel — the 17.73 km long Banihal-Quazigund section on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramula rail link — will soon be thrown open for passenger traffic. Work is complete on the section and once the ongoing safety survey is over, passenger traffic will begin on the route. The railways have spent Rs1,691 crore on construction of the section.  The crowning glory of the section, an engineering marvel in itself, is the 11.2-km-long Pir Panjal tunnel, which is the country’s largest tunnel and Asia’s third largest tunnel. The tunnel alone cost Rs1,300 crore to the railways. At least 1,300 labourers and 150 engineers have worked for seven years on the construction of the tunnel. The entire section has 39 bridges. The tunnel consumed 7,500 metric tonne steel, 3,28,000 cubic metre concrete, and 10 lakh cubic metre soil has been displaced for the tunnel.  The section will halve the distance between Banihal-Quazigund from 35 km to 17 km. The link will ensure faster and cheaper travel to the commuters. During extreme weather conditions between the months of December and March, commuters face a lot of problem due to shutting down of the Jawahar tunnel. Mostly during these months, only one-way traffic is allowed on the Jammu-Srinagar highway. The rail link is likely to reduce such difficulties for commuters.  Apart from the two railway stations, the Quazigund-Banihal section will have a halt at Hiller village in Anantnag district. Trial runs have been happening on the section since December last year using freight trains.