Bridge to the Kashmir Valley: Lives along the line

Indian Express

15 hours ago

The Pir Panjal range surrounds the village of Sumber in Jammu's Ramban district. Once a hotbed of militancy and untouched by development, its people led hardscrabble lives. And then, last year, Sumber got a railway station — a quaint, whitewashed structure with slanting green roofs. And with it, a road, an electricity line and piped water.
It took another year for Mohammad Shafi, 54, to gather the courage to step inside a train. He and his eight-year-old granddaughter had boarded the passenger train from Sumber, sat side by side on the blue, worn-out seats, and watched bewildered at the rugged landscape that sped past their window.
'The train ride happened because of my granddaughter. She is in Class 3 and wanted to get some books from Banihal town. We reached Banihal in 35 minutes and that too for Rs 10,' says Shafi.
Until then, for Shafi, travelling to Banihal meant a 91-km road journey for four hours, changing three vehicles and spending at least Rs 500.
Sumber is one of 27 stations on the 272-km Kashmir line, also called Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL). On June 6, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 63-km Katra-Sangaldan section of the USBRL and flagged off two special Vande Bharat trains (Katra to Srinagar and Srinagar to Katra). With that, the tracks have managed to finally connect two regions joined at the hip by more than an ampersand — Jammu & Kashmir.
The 272-km USBRL is broadly divided into three parts: the 25-km Udhampur-Katra stretch, 111-km Katra-Banihal and 136-km Banihal-Baramulla. While the line has been operational in phases — with the earliest stretch, the 118-km Qazigund to Baramulla link in Kashmir, inaugurated in 2009 — there was one missing link: between Katra and Sangaldan. It was this stretch that was inaugurated by the PM on June 6.
For the engineers and workers who developed the Kashmir rail link, this was the most arduous of stretches. In the end, they pulled off several technological feats — the world's highest railway arch bridge (the 359-metre-high Chenab Bridge); the Indian Railways' first cable-stayed bridge (the 725.5-metre-long Anji Bridge); 97 km of tracks that cut through tunnels; and bridges spanning 7 km. Given the high level of engineering involved, over 80 per cent of the project funds (Rs 35,000 crore of the estimated cost of over Rs 43,000 crore) were spent on this stretch.
Sandeep Gupta, who was Chief Engineer of USBRL for over 10 years and retired as Chief Administrative Officer of the project in February 2025, said the Katra-Banihal stretch faced several challenges — from alignment to inclement weather, the frequent blockage of National Highway-44, the unrest following the Burhan Wani encounter (July 2016) and the Pulwama terror attack (February 2019).
But now, he says, 'It really feels good, especially when you consider where we started in the early 2000s, when we used to go for surveys on horses and mules. We would often stay back in the villages and eat what the locals gave us. We have come a long way since then. This is a big achievement for the Indian Railways and the country.'
In these parts, some of the remotest in the country, much before the tracks were laid, came other 'wonders' — approach roads and small bridges. While these were built by the Railways to supply materials for developing the stations and tracks, something else changed in these parts: lives.
Over the last decade, the Railways says, 215 km of approach roads and 320 small bridges have been built under the project.
At Sumber village market in Ramban, the road opened up possibilities for Ratan Singh, 27, who runs an electronics shop.
During the days of militancy, Singh says, he dropped out after school and the family left the village for the district headquarters in Udhampur. They later returned to Sumber and, in 2024, when the station came up, Singh decided to start his business.
'In 2009-10, the access road was built and now we can go to Jammu and other towns, from where we buy at cheaper rates. Though it still takes almost six hours to reach Jammu by road, it is better than those days when we had to travel on horses and mules,' says Singh.
Though the Vande Bharat train will speed past Sumber (the only stop on the route is at Banihal), Singh is excited about the train.
'The train will not only make it easier to travel from Jammu to Srinagar, but will open new avenues for education, healthcare, and jobs.'
At his home on the outskirts of Sumber, Mohd. Nazeer Ahmed, a 40-year-old driver, remembers his childhood days when he would go down the mountain to where the Chenab flowed. 'It would take us four to five hours to come back. We were not just physically cut off from the mainland, we were deprived of education as well.'
In 2010 came a road linking his village to Dharamkund, which connected it further to Ramban town. People started travelling out of the village and with that came a demand for vehicles. 'I had no particular skill. But I learnt driving,' says Ahmed. He now has an SUV that he uses to ferry people to Ramban.
While the access road changed his life, he sometimes worries if the train will take his customers away. But he is also excited. 'For the last 10 years, I have been wanting to visit Delhi… Someday, I will take the Vande Bharat to Delhi,' says Ahmed.
Gran Bayotran village lies on the banks of the Chenab, adjacent to the Reasi railway station, the second halt on the Katra-Sangaldan stretch that was inaugurated on June 6.
Takan Das Sharma, 78, a resident of the village, vividly remembers the day he saw a 'railway station, a train and a ticket for the first time'. That was in 1973, when Sharma, then a clerk with the Revenue Department in Katra, travelled to Jammu for his boss who wanted him to book a ticket on board the Jammu-Pathankot Srinagar Express.
'Jammu is only 66 km from Reasi. They had railway lines even in those days; it took another 50 years for us to get a station in Reasi,' says Sharma, who retired as Mohasib (Senior Land Revenue Accountant).
He says the train to Kashmir is a 'childhood dream' come true. A member of the RSS since 1960, Sharma says it was a BJP leader from Udhampur, the late Chaman Lal Gupta, who sought a station in Reasi. 'After that, they conducted a survey in our village. But some issues of alignment came up and the project ended there,' he says.
Metres away, standing on the rooftop of his house, Harish Kumar, 34, beams as he proudly points to Bridge-39 (called the Reasi Bridge) in the distance. With a diploma in civil engineering, Kumar was one of the supervisors for the bridge. 'Out of the eight slabs on this bridge, we built four. When the construction of the (Reasi) railway station began, around 300 people from our village got jobs. The good thing is, the project trained people who otherwise had no skills. That was helpful, but now they are without work,' he says.
According to data available with the Ministry of Railways, 14,069 people were employed through contractors on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link – over 9,000 of them from J&K. The Railways employed those who gave up more than 75 per cent of their land for the project.
Raj Kumar, 58, sarpanch of the village, says property prices have shot up since word spread of the Vande Bharat passing through Reasi. 'A kanal (0.05 hectare) cost Rs 2 lakh around 10 years ago; now it's Rs 15-20 lakh,' he says.
On board train to Baramulla.
It is 6 am and Train no 74619, a passenger train from Sangaldan to Baramulla, is at Platform Number 2. Outside the gates of Sangaldan station is a long queue of passengers waiting to board the train — daily wagers and students, but most noticeably, patients.
The eight-coach diesel train is run-down with broken windows, grimy chairs and with many of the passengers squatting on the floor. Yet, the Sangaldan-Baramulla line has been a lifeline in these parts, especially for people in the hilly areas who go to Banihal, Anantnag and Srinagar for medical emergencies. The 160-km road journey from Sangaldan to Srinagar used to take an entire day; but now, the train takes people to Srinagar in three hours.
As the whistle goes off, Parvez Ahmad, 35, hurriedly takes a seat. A resident of Sangaldan, Ahmad is headed to Khari, the second station on the Sangaldan-Banihal stretch, to fix a tilling implement. 'I run a shop in Sangaldan that sells spare auto parts. At times, I travel to people's homes to fix their machines. Earlier, it used to take me more than two hours by road to reach Khari, now it takes just 35 minutes. Because of this train, I can manage both my shop and these visits,' says Ahmad.
Minutes later, the train crosses Sumber station and enters Tunnel No. 50, India's longest transportation tunnel.
Amina, a 54-year-old farm worker who identifies herself only by the first name, boards the train at Khari. She had walked for around four kilometres from her village Trigam, boarded a shared vehicle and travelled another hour to reach the station. On her way to Srinagar to visit an ophthalmologist for a niggling eye condition, Amina says, 'If I miss this train today, the next train will only be available tomorrow. Or else, I will have to spend Rs 2,000 to go to Srinagar by road. I paid only Rs 40 for this train ticket. There is no hospital in my area. If people in the hills fall ill, it is only luck that can save them. There are villages where people have to travel an entire day on foot to reach the station.'
Past Banihal, the train enters 'T-80' — the Pir Panjal tunnel. When it was made operational in 2013, the 11.2-km tunnel was considered the 'backbone of USBRL' since it linked Jammu region to Kashmir by railway for the first time.
At the other end of the tunnel is the first station of Kashmir-Hiller Shahabad Halt. The train now passes through a landscape of breathtaking beauty — mustard and saffron fields, apple orchards and poplar trees, with the peaks of the Himalayas as a constant backdrop.
At Anantnag station, a 28-year old, who works as a nurse at a private hospital in Srinagar, boards the train. Standing by the door, he says, 'The local train service is good, but for people like me who have to go to work every day, it is not very reliable. It's slow and gets delayed often. That is why people travel by bus.'
The new Vande Bharat trains are an easy conversation starter, but he has a grouse: 'What is the point of having a train from Jammu to Srinagar if you don't stop for people on the way?'
Though the Indian Railways has overcome the toughest of challenges — from militancy to the complex geology of the Himalayas — to link Jammu to Kashmir by rail, what does it mean for a region that has lived in turbulence and distrust for decades.
'There is this fascination that we have for Kashmir,' says Raj Kumar, the sarpanch of Gran Bayotran village in Jammu's Reasi. 'Though we are part of the same state, very few people have seen or gone to Srinagar. I hope this train bridges not only the distance between the two regions, but also hearts in Jammu and Kashmir. Whether it is terrorism or politics, the common public has nothing to do with any of it.'
RSS worker Takan Das is not so sure. He says the train may address employment and tourism, but 'healing wounds' won't be that easy. 'The gap will not be bridged until Pandits are rehabilitated,' he says.
At Srinagar station, a constable of the Government Railway Police (GRP) boards a near-empty coach and takes a seat by the window. He is on his way home to Baramulla and has heard of the Vande Bharat train.
'The distrust between Jammu and Kashmir is very deep. If the two regions can be brought together by a railway line, what can be better than that?'
Dheeraj Mishra is a Principal correspondent with The Indian Express, Business Bureau. He covers India's two key ministries- Ministry of Railways and Ministry of Road Transport & Highways. He frequently uses the Right to Information (RTI) Act for his stories, which have resulted in many impactful reports. ... Read More