PIR PANJAL RAILWAY TUNNEL
The Pir Panjal Railway Tunnel is 11.215 km long railway tunnel located in Pir Panjal Range of middle Himalayas in Jammu and Kashmir, north of Banihal town. It is a part of the Jammu–Baramulla line. The average elevation of the railway tunnel is 1,760 m or about 440 m below the existing road tunnel, the Jawahar Tunnel, which is at an elevation of about 2,194 m. The tunnel is 8.40 metres wide with a height of 7.39 metres. There is a three-metre-wide road along the length of the tunnel for the maintenance of railway tracks and emergency relief. It is India’s longest railway tunnel. It takes approximately 9 minutes and 30 seconds for the train to cross the tunnel.
The Banihal-Qazigund tunnel for the Jammu–Baramulla line connecting Bichleri Valley of Banihal with Qazigund area of Kashmir Valley has been constructed as a part of its Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project. The boring was completed in four years in October 2011, its lining and laying of rail tracks was completed in the next one year and trial run commenced on 28 December 2012. The tunnel was commissioned on 26 June 2013 and commercial runs started from 27 June 2013.
The rail tunnel reduces the distance between Quazigund and Banihal by 17 kilometres by road to 17.5 kilometres by train. The railway network in Kashmir from Banihal to Baramulla is 137 kilometres. Until the 148 kilometres Katra-Banihal section of Jammu–Baramulla line gets constructed , people can travel from Jammu Tawi or Udhampur to Banihal by road and take the train from Banihal to Srinagar through the Banihal railway tunnel.
The tunnel link, the only broad gauge mountain railway in India, stretches through the Pir Panjal mountain range. The new Austrian tunnelling method (NATM) has been used for the construction of the tunnel. It the first large scale project in India where the method has been implemented. Soil equivalent of one mountain was excavated for the tunnel, using a tunnel excavator, road header and drill and blast methods. It was the first time that a road header was used for excavation in India. About one million cubic metres of excavation was involved in the project.
