Indian Railway Building Longest Train Tunnel Under Mud Mountains in North East: All You Need To Know

Guwahati: In a bid to connect Imphal with Guwahati by rail, the Indian Railways is constructing the country's longest rail tunnel under National Capital Connectivity.

For the first time in the country, the longest tunnel is being built under a high mountain of mud. Up to 70 percent of its work has been completed. The remaining 30 percent will be completed soon and the train will be run from this tunnel till December 2023.

The line will cover 62 Km through tunnel

The new rail route is 111 km from Jiribam to Imphal to connect Guwahati and Imphal. The rail line will cover a distance of about 62 km through the tunnel. However, the longest tunnel is of 10.3 km.

Challenges faced

Notably, Northern Frontier Railway (NFR) has faced many challenges while constructing this tunnel, and almost 70 percent work has been completed.

Train operation on this line

According to a report in News18, Sandeep Sharma, Chief Engineer of Jiribam to Imphal Rail Project said that 7.3 km work has been completed out of 10.3 km. The remaining work will soon be completed and the operation of trains is expected to start by December 2023.

Work carried out with caution

He further asserted that the biggest challenge in this was to make a tunnel under the 65 meter mountain of soil because during the excavation there was possibility of releasing several types of gas and besides this there was also risk of soil collapsed. So keeping these things in mind, the work was carried out with caution.

It will be second longest tunnel in the country

According to the Chief Engineer the tunnel is the longest to be built under the soil. However, the country's longest tunnel is in Pir Panjal, whose length is 11.2 km. In general, it will be the second longest tunnel in the country.

Let us look at the Jiribam Imphal Rail Line

The total length of the said line is 111 km and the rail line will cover about 62 km through the tunnel i.e. more than 56 percent of it will go through tunnels. The total length of all the bridges to be built on this line will be 3.5 km. The entire railway line will have 10 stations.

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