A couple of months from now, train services to Kashmir from all over India will turn what seemed like an impossible dream at one time into a reality. Atal Behari Vajpayee laid the firm foundations of the Udhampur-Baramulla railway line in April 2003. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has seen to it that the project was expedited and did not get stuck.
On February 20 (last month), Modi virtually inaugurated the 48-km Banihal-Sangaldan railway line while on a visit to Jammu. It was snowing heavily at both Banihal and Sangaldan when the train did this inaugural run. Some tourists from Maharashtra and Gujarat were super excited as they travelled on board the train. The common refrain among them was that they will travel again from Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Ahmedabad etc in the coming winter again.
It is worth mentioning here that the first train had reached Jammu on March 13, 1890, during the reign of Maharaja Pratap Singh. At that time, the railway route was through Jalandhar, Amritsar, Lahore, Sialkot and Jammu. However, trains made their last journeys on these tracks in October 1947 after the creation of Pakistan. It was 25 years later in October 1972 that Jammu got its next train via Jalandhar, Pathankot, Kathua and Samba.
Interestingly, when the 38-km Sialkot-Jammu rail track was declared open on March 13, 1890, the Maharaja announced free rides for all on first two days. As such, over 10,000 people used the trains between Jammu and Sialkot on this route for joyrides then. The first station after Sialkot (towards Jammu) was Suchetgarh which was called Octroi post once. Decades later, when cinema halls opened in Jammu, people from Sialkot often came in riding these trains.
The railway line from Sialkot to Jammu became dysfunctional from October 1947 as Pakistan stopped the train services as part of its strategy to choke J&K. This was the time when it raided Maharaja Hari Singh’s kingdom from many sides, but that is another story.
It was only in October 1972, at least 25 years later that Jammu saw another train when the railway line from Jalandhar-Pathankot-Kathua-Samba was completed. In 1983, an announcement was made to construct a 54 kilometre Jammu-Udhampur line. It was a project that languished for over two decades, but during the Vajpayee era, work on train from Udhampur to Baramulla started in earnest. Interestingly, work was taken up simultaneously at both ends to hasten it up.
The 48-kilometre Banihal-Sangaldan stretch was completed at a cost of over Rs 15,863 crore, which means it cost over Rs 330 crore per km! The construction of 272-km USBRL got a fillip, and, and Vajpayee declared it as National Project in 2002. In terms of money, the cost of connecting Kashmir valley with the rest of the country through railway network has been high but it is going to be a huge disruptive change. There are dozens of tunnels and around 1,000 bridges on this route! The longest tunnel on this route stretches to 12.77 km and the highest bridge is the Chenab bridge in Reasi district which is 359 metres tall.
The Jammu-Udhampur rail track became functional in April 2005 and the 25-km rail track to Katra, the base camp for Shri Mata Vaishno Devi shrine, received its first train in July 2014. The Chenab bridge, located between Katra and Reasi railway stations, is the tallest rail bridge worldwide having a height of 359 meters (taller than Eiffel Tower of 330 meters) and spanning 1,315 meters.
After Reasi (towards Banihal and beyond), all the railway stations on USBRL track get snowfall in winters and this is expected to attract tourists in hordes. The stretch between Reasi and Banihal has remained unexplored and is virgin territory in terms of tourist footfalls.
In August 1947, no train services were available in Jammu & Kashmir. The Jalandhar-Pathankot line had become functional in 1952 but it was only after 1965 war that this line was extended to Jammu. The doubling as also electrification work on Jammu-Jalandhar line of 216 km was completed in 2014.
The train services started between Jalandhar and Jammu in October 1972; between Jammu and Udhampur (55 km) in April 2005 and between Udhampur and Katra (25 km) in July 2014. In the Kashmir valley, Anantnag-Mazhom (68 km) section became operational in October 2008; Mazhom to Baramulla (32 km) in February 2009 and Qazigund-Banihal (18 km) section in June 2013. As such, it has taken more than a decade for the Banihal to Sangaldan stretch to become operational.
Incidentally, when the USBRL becomes fully operational, the total length of railway line from Kathua to Baramulla will be around 408 km. (Kathua-Jammu: 81 km; Jammu-Udhampur: 55 km and Udhampur-Baramulla: 272 km).
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