Minister of State for Railways & Textiles, Darshana Jardosh on Friday shared images of a 350-metre-long mountain tunnel on the country's first high-speed rail corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
The mountain tunnel has been completed near Zaroli village in Valsad district in Gujarat in a short span of 10 months.
The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), which is constructing the corridor, celebrated the moment by carrying out a final blast to remove the last layers of rock close to the tunnel's entrance.
Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train's First Tunnel
S P Mittal, Chief Project Manager of the Valsad section told news agency PTI that the biggest challenge for them was how to keep the alignment of the tunnel straight because the bullet train will run at a speed of 350 kmph and a minor alignment flaw can play a spoilsport. So every specification had to be followed precisely. Mittal said that there will not be a deviation of even a single millimetre.
The skeleton structure of the complete tunnel and the finishing work will start now. The tunnel has reportedly taken more than a year and a large workforce to complete the work.
Precautions Taken To Build Mountain Tunnel
The NHSRCL has awarded the contract to Larsen and Toubro and the technique that has been used to make the tunnel is the well-established New Austrian Tunnelling Method (NATM), which has already been used in India for rail and road projects in several mountain areas.
This tunnel is the first one in India through which a train with a speed of 350 kmph will pass.
The team did not face a single untoward incident over the entire construction period and when the blasts were carried out for such tunnels, the safety of the workers and people residing in the vicinity were taken care of. Precautions were taken to ensure that stones, boulders or any other such material did not spread in the nearby area and hurt villagers or the workers.
Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train: Tunnels On The Route
A total of seven tunnels are proposed to be made on the 508-km route between Mumbai and Ahmedabad and the work for the second one will start very soon.
After coming into existence in 2016, the NHSRCL laid the foundation stone of the bullet train project in 2017 and it was proposed to be ready by December 2023. However, land acquisition issues delayed the ambitious project.
Though the construction work is going on in full swing, the new deadline for the project's operationalisation is yet to be announced.
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