The construction world’s highest railway line will shortly be well underway in India, after the Indian Railways approved the construction of a railway line connecting Ladakh to New Delhi. The strategic Bilaspur-Manali-Leh railway line will be built along the India-China border, and the first phase of the location survey has already been completed.
This ambitious project, which has been given the status of a national project, is estimated to cost a whopping Rs 83,360 crores and extends 498 kilometres. According to reports, the highest point of the project will be completed 5,360 metres above the sea level. The closest competition this has is to the Qinghai-Tibet Railway Line in China, which is at a height of around 2,000 metres.
The route will connect important locations between Bilaspur and Leh like Sundernagar, Mandi, Manali, Keylong, Koksar, Darcha, Upshi and Karu and other important towns of Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. This project also hopes to boost tourism in the Ladakh-Himachal region, which is currently connected only by road and air. However, this connectivity is affected in extreme weather conditions, and the railway line hopes to solve this problem.
According to the first phase of the survey, trains traversing this route will be met with 74 tunnels, 124 major bridges and 396 minor bridges. The longest tunnel will reportedly be 27 km long, and the total lengths of the tunnels will be 244 kms. The line will also halve the distance from Delhi to Leh, from 40 hours to about 20 hours, and will also include 30 stations on it.
While the date and year of completion of the project are still unclear, the final location survey is expected to be completed in 30 months. Once completed, the railway line will enable quicker movement of Indian troops and equipment if needed, and also give them an edge over the Chinese in case of a possible dispute.
