A Maze Of Tunnels
The journey is breathtaking. Travelling by train on a 30-metre high
embankment, you suddenly shoot through a tunnel over 3-km long, emerge for a
brief moment on terra firma, then rush on to a bridge over a deep gorge. In
winter, a stream bursts below you; in summer, the red earth snakes endlessly
on. Catch your breath for a moment; for suspended 50 odd metres above the
ground, the train travels downwards into yet another tunnel, this one more
than 6-km long. In about three minutes you are out again, crossing a bridge
over 65m high, the height of a 15-storeyed building. The landscape of the
Panval River below defies description.
You are in Ratnagiri district in southern Maharashtra on the Konkan
Railway, the largest railway project in the world in the last five decades
and the largest in South Asia this century. The Rs. 2,000-crore railway
project connects the coastal areas of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka,
opening up the picturesque West Coast of India to the train-travelling
tourist for the first time.
For the Indian Railways, it’s the last frontier. The network has been
expanding at the rate of 1,000 miles a year since the first line was opened
from Boribunder to Thane on April 16, 1853. But though the tracks spanned
53,596-kms across the subcontinent by the time India became independent in
1947, there was one important missing link. The broad gauge line from the
south reached Mangalore by 1907, but the more direct 1,000-kms coastal route
between Mumbai (Bombay) and Mangalore remained unbridged.
Mission Accomplished
As far back as 1882, a survey had been conducted on the feasibility of a
railway line along the picturesque out into estuaries, and in the monsoon,
rice paddies turned to lakes, it was nightmare country for the engineers, a
never ending chain of foothills of the Western Ghats from which innumerable
rivers flowed out into the Arabian Sea.
But
since 1991, between the Ghats on the east and the Arabian Sea to the west
25,000 workers have been toiling day and night- blasting through rock,
breathing the foul air of underground shafts, pitting themselves against a
breathtaking but unrelenting terrain.
The entire Western Coast of India has so far been dependent on a single
arterial road, National Highway 17, which is now saturated and badly damaged
by the rains. Now, the Konkan Railways have become a much-needed alternative
in traversing this belt. The Konkan Railway, a broad gauge single line,
extends from Mumbai through the backward areas between Roha and Mangalore, a
distance of 760-km of these, 382-km lie in Maharashtra, 105-km in Goa and
273-km in Karnataka.
There are 53 stations on the line, the more important ones being Veer,
Khed, Chiplun, Ratnagiri, Rajapur Road, Sindhudurg, Mapusa Road, Goa, Udupi,
Mangalore, among others. From southern Karnataka, the Konkan Railway has
built a connection with Kerala on the central railway line that extends to
Kochi (Cochin) and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum).
Creating New Inroads For Tourism And
Industry
Apart from tourism, Indian industry benefits enormously as well, with the
railway allowing for reasonable and speedy transport of raw material,
finished products and human resources, and linking major and minor ports
along the western coast. With this much-needed infrastructure provided, the
Konkan stretch rich in minerals such as Iron Ore, Bauxite, Chromite,
Manganese and Silica Sand, is expected to see much industrial and economic
development.
Already initiated are large investments for developing power such as the
approximately 1,000 mega-watt thermal power plant at Mangalore and the
Dabhol Power Plant in southern Maharashtra. Petroleum industries are
initiated at Mangalore, Devagarh near Chiplun and Nagothane near Roha, and a
steel plant also at Mangalore. The state of Kerala is promoting specially
dedicated industrial and technical parks, a southern states power grid and a
liquefied natural gas plant. This coupled with the availability of manpower,
will tap the abundant resources of this region.
INDIAN
RAILWAYS
