Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw inspecting the railway tracks on the bridge

Srinagar: Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Sunday visited Chenab Bridge in Kashmir Valley and inspected ongoing work for the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla train service project (USBRL).

Officials of the USBRL Project briefed the Railway Minister about the world's highest railway bridge Chenab and the progress on the project.

The Minister conducted a trolley inspection of the Chenab Bridge and tunnels of the USBRL project to see the progress of the work and gave instructions to officials for its timely completion.

The Minister appreciated the hard work of all the railway staff involved in this project and their dedication towards duty despite various challenges and adverse conditions.

Vaishnaw further informed that all efforts are being done to complete the remaining work.

The minister also interacted with major metro cities media persons siting in zonal headquarters showcasing seamless network connectivity at the highest railway bridge pan India.

Video and audio arrangements were provided at the world's highest Railway bridge at Chinab river by providing 300 MBPS Internet bandwidth from JIO, 100 MBPS Airtel Internet network, 100 MBPS BSNL Internet as well as on OFC cable from Salal.

While addressing the media persons gathered there across the Nation, Vaishanw announced the following - USBRL Project to be completed by January/February 2024, allocated Rs 6,000 crores in the year 2022-23, before 2014 this allocation was 800 crores per year. After connecting with the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla train service specially built Vande Bharat train will be started. A Special Training Academy for Engineers will be created at Jammu. Kashmir Valley will be connected to the Indian railways' network soon. Laser sharp focus on the development of the Country.

Vaishnaw said, "This is a very very complex project. There are many engineering challenges in this entire area which is highly earthquake-prone. So, this bridge has been designed to make sure that even at a Richter scale eight seismic activity, these bridges are stable."

"If you look at the foundation of this bridge, the foundation itself is more than half the size of a football field. Very specially designed 18,000 debit deck bars have been used to lay the foundation of the bridge then the entire structure has been designed for 266 km per hour wind velocity with bridges of about 28,000 tonnes of steel," he added.

Lauding the leadership in the country, he said, "Apart from the engineering challenges what is more important is the country's leadership. This bridge was started in 2005-2006, but till 2014 there was very little progress. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji took the leadership of the country he took some very key decisions. One of the decisions was to increase the allocation for this project."

"Allocation for this project earlier was just about Rs 700-800 crore a year. He immediately increased it and by now the allocation for the project is 6,000 crore. He also took a call that the design of the bridge should be for more than 100 years. The design of this bridge today for the life is 120 years. So all these challenges have been overcome primarily because of the decisive leadership of the country's leader Narendra Modi," he added.