Indian PM inaugurates India’s biggest rail tunnel in Kashmir visit

Indian PM inaugurates India’s biggest rail tunnel in Kashmir visit

A 11-km railway tunnel across the Pir Panjal mountain range, inaugurated by Prime Minister  Manmohan SinghWednesday, is not only the longest such in India but an engineering awesome sight and a “dream come true” for the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, inaugurated first all-weather surface link to Kashmir. The determined rail link is expected to bring lot of assistance to the people in this Himalayan region which regularly gets cut-off during winters due to heavy snowfall on Jammu-Srinagar highway, the only road link joining Kashmir with rest of the world

It took seven years for thousands of men, most of them highly-trained and skilled in tunnel building, who braved environmental constraints and stormy weather to build the all-weather tunnel. Some of the tunnel tedious machinery – an improved Austrian version – has been used for the first time on such a large scale in the country during the placeing of the tunnel.