Indian Railways completes caving work for world’s first electrified doublestack container tunnel in the Aravallis, near Haryana.
In a breakthrough for Indian Railways, a 1-km-long tunnel has been cut through the Aravallis on the railway’s Western Dedicated Freight Corridor near Haryana’s Sohna with a plan to ply electric goods train with double-stack containers through it in the next 12 months, Railway officials have said.
Engineers had to blast through 2,500 to 500 million-years-old proterozoic rocks to build the world’s first electrified double-stack container tunnel.
Once operational, a double-stack container goods train will be able to run at a speed of more than 100 kmph in this tunnel. It connects Mewat and Gurgaon districts of Haryana, and negotiates a steep gradient on the uphill and downhill slope of the Aravalli range.
“Tunnel-breaking ceremony marks the completion of the tunnel caving work at the WDFC’s (Western Dedicated Freight Corridor) one-km-long tunnel through the Aravallis near Sohna in Haryana,” implementing agency of the project, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) said, in a statement.
“Tunnelling work has been done systematically and in a planned manner from both the ends by deploying high-tech man and machinery. This is the reason behind completing the caving work in a record one-year time,” the DFCCIL said in the statement.
“Despite the coronavirus pandemic, work is progressing at a fast and resolute pace in DFCCIL. The Eastern (excluding the PPP section) and Western DFC is slated for completion in June 2022,” according to the statement.
