Title - New deadline set for Silchar-Lumding line

Silchar, July 31:The Northeast Frontier Railway has set a new deadline of March 31, 2015 for the 201km Silchar-Lumding broad gauge railway conversion project.
The date was set after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked the railways ministry on July 18 to expedite the project.
The new NFR general manager (construction), Rajesh Kumar Singh, told workers at the construction site in Jatinga, 10km from Haflong, last afternoon that there should not be any further delay in completion of the project. He directed them to ensure that the first trial run on the new track is done by April 2015.
A senior NFR (construction) official today said if the trial run is successful, trains could run on the tracks by June or July 2015.
The project, whose foundation stone was laid on January 24, 1996 by the then Prime Minister, H.D. Deve Gowda, has seen its costballoon to Rs 4,255 crore from Rs 658 crore.
Railway sources said there would be 56 bridges, 24 tunnels and 24 stations along the broad gauge line, which will replace the metre gauge track constructed by the British in 1904.
The NFR general manager announced another deadline of October 1, 2014, for beginning the mega block process. A mega block is a construction device used to set up sleepers in the tracks.
Another NFR official said over phone from Jatinga today that the“mega block” exercise will hopefully be completed by March 31, 2015. According to him, the most difficult work is the construction of two tunnels — one in Mahur and another near Jatinga village. The second is nestled on a ridge of Barail hill range.
The general manager said the task of constructing the tunnels in the hill route was a formidable task and state-of-the-art boomer machines had been imported from South Korea for drilling through the hillside.
He said the previous contractors, Mumbai-based Patel Constructions, had quit after their workers faced a host of geological problems like emission of methane gas while building the tunnels. This led to delay in the project as another engineering firm had to be selected for the challenging job.