By IANS,
Mumbai : Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) Friday achieved a major breakthrough of “day-lighting”, or improving the clearance, of the Pir Panjal railway tunnel, part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link project of the Indian Railways, the company said.
The tunnel passes nearly half a kilometre below the existing Jawahar road tunnel through the rugged Pir Panjal mountains in Jammu and Kashmir, the company said here in a statement.
At 10.96-km long, the Pir Panjal railway tunnel is India’s longest and Asia’s second longest tunnel, aimed at reducing the travel distance between Quazigund to Banihal to only 11 km and providing a hassle-free travel up to Baramulla.
HCC was awarded the contract for Pir Panjal railway tunnel cosntruction in August 2005 at a contract value of Rs.391 crore.
The engineering work included construction of a tunnel with a finished width of 8.405 metres and height of 7.393 metres and a provision of three-metre wide concrete road inside the tunnel throughout the length for maintenance and emergency relief purpose, and also construction of 772 metres long access tunnel section.
Due to the changing geological strata of the young Himalayan rock, the New Australian Tunneling Methodology (NATM) was adopted for the construction.
The project also became extremely challenging as the area sees heavy snowfall in winter, bringing the temperatures down to minus 10 degrees Celsius.