The Indian Railways longest tunnel, T-49, between Sumber and Arpinchala station of Katra-Banihal section of Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) has been connected successfully.

Out of 272 km length of the USBRL project, 161 km length is already operationalised. The railways revealed that the work on the 111 km intervening stretch between Katra Banihal is under construction at a rapid pace.

T-49 is a tunnel 12.758 km long, and it would be the longest tunnel of Indian Railways, surpassing the Peer Panjal Tunnel of 11.2 km in length built by USBRL on the Banihal-Qazigund section.

The tunnel T-49's south portal (SP) is located in the Sumber Village, 45 km away from the District H.Q. Ramban of Jammu and Kashmir, with an altitude of 1400 meters.

Meanwhile, the North Portal (NP) of the tunnel is located near Arpinchala village Tehsil Khari, in District Ramban, at an altitude of about 1600 meters.

T-49 includes two tubes, the first is the main tunnel, and the other escapes the tunnel. The construction of the tunnel is done by using the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM), an advanced technique of drill and blast method. The Cross-section shape of the tunnel is modified horseshoe-shaped.

To facilitate construction, three adits- Urnihal Adit, Hingni Adit and Kundan Adit have been constructed. The tunnel has a ruling gradient of one in 80 and a designed speed of 100 kmph.

According to the International standards, the Escape Tunnel being constructed parallel to the Main Tunnel is linked to the cross passages at an interval of 375m to enable rescue and restoration work.

The NR commissioned construction work to IRCON International Ltd, which assigned work in two packages to HCC and AFCONS Infrastructure Limited.

HCC is managing 5.1 km length work from South Portal, and AFCONS is executing 7.658 km length work from North Portal.

The railways revealed that they encountered many challenges like highly jointed rock mass, shear zone, rock problems, and much more.The experienced team of engineers of Northern Railway, IRCON, and the executing agencies HCC and AFCONS successfully negotiated every difficulty and made it possible to accomplish this project.

During the tunnel construction, the local population was also employed by the agencies for several works, which also helped the overall socio-economic landscape.

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