Rajendra Prasad, Managing Director, National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL), is captain of the corporation which achieved a major milestone and significant breakthrough with the first 350-metre-long horse-shoe shape mountain first tunnel in India through which a train at a whopping speed of 350 kmph will pass for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail corridor and it is also the first mountain tunnel which has been completed within 10 months. All the more a cause for celebration in view of the fact that the biggest challenge lay in keeping the tunnel’s alignment absolutely straight since the bullet train will run at a whopping speed of 350 kmph and even a minor alignment flaw can play spoilsport. So every specification had to be followed precisely without a deviation of even a single millimetre. Tunnelling work took over a year, and a large workforce, to complete the task. The corridor has a 21 km tunnel between Bandra-Kurla Complex in Mumbai and Shilphata in Thane district of which 7 km will be under the Thane creek, making it the first undersea tunnel in the country