Train to Kashmir: How rly engineers beat Himalayan odds to build a marvel

Time of India

4 days ago

Lucknow: Neetu Sapra has bittersweet memories of the 14 years she spent in J&K since 1997.
"No quarters, peak insurgency, the Kargil War – it was a roller coaster," she says of life in a CRPF camp in Srinagar with a two-year-old son and a railway officer husband handling a project as fraught with danger as it was technically daunting.
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"During a shopping trip to Lal Chowk in 1998, we narrowly escaped a bomb blast. The USBRL shaped us as much as we shaped it."
Neetu's story is intertwined with the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) that PM Narendra Modi is scheduled to inaugurate on Friday, marking the physical bridging of what was once considered a geographical implausibility – the idea of seamless rail connectivity from
to Kanyakumari.
"Wives of all railway personnel associated with USBRL would have similar stories to tell," says Neetu, whose husband Suresh Kumar Sapra was then an executive engineer with Northern Railway.
Audacious dream
Sapra was posted in Udhampur when former PM H D Deve Gowda laid USBRL's foundation stone in Udhampur in early 1997. Many thought the task of carving a route through the undulating, terrorist-infested terrain was a fanciful idea.
By April that year, India had a new PM in I K Gujral, and a second foundation ceremony was soon planned in Srinagar for the Qazigund-Baramulla section.
Sapra recalls receiving an official note from his senior colleague Sandeep Gupta, the executive engineer assigned to lead the 13-strong technical team, to proceed to Srinagar for the July 12, 1997, event. "We were told that PM Gujral wanted work on the Qazigund-Baramulla survey to begin immediately," he says.
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With the odds as steep as the Pir Panjal, the team got cracking. "We were stunned (by the enormity of the task). Srinagar was synonymous with militancy. Nobody was prepared," Gupta, who retired as USBRL's chief administrative officer in Feb this year, writes in the 2009 TOI coffee table book, Linking Paradise: A Northern Railway Project.
Gupta's team had to make do without any of the creature comforts senior railway officials were entitled to.
No quarters, no telephones, erratic electricity, and an inadequate number of vehicles. "We had no choice but to dive in. This was bigger than us," he writes in the book.
Valley of uncertainty
Sapra's trip to Srinagar from Udhampur to prepare for the foundation ceremony prepared him for what lay ahead.
"With two junior engineers for company – Om Prakash Chetiwal and Rashid Lone – I left for Srinagar. Just 13km beyond Udhampur, we dodged the possibility of death by a few metres as a landslide occurred in front of our eyes.
The national highway was blocked for 48 hours."
A week later, Gupta joined them, reaching Srinagar on a rickety van. A team from CRPF's 69th battalion contingent was then occupying the railway-owned holiday home in Srinagar's Tulsi Bagh, leaving Gupta's team to cram into four dingy rooms within their office complex.
"We had only candles for light and hauled water in buckets from CRPF tankers till the shared toilet," says Sapra, currently principal executive director in the Research Design and Standards Organisation in Lucknow.
Food meant instant noodles, eggs and bread, with Sapra doubling as the team's "executive chef" and Gupta doing the dishes. "We were a family, not just colleagues," says Sapra.
Living conditions and logistics remained a challenge throughout. The state power department refused to restore electricity to the railway facility, citing unpaid bills throughout a decade of unrest. It took several meetings with the then divisional commissioner of Kashmir, SL Bhat, for power supply to be restored.
Mudassara, the PA to the then DoT general manager, intervened to provide landlines.
Snow and suspense
On Nov 12, 1997, a railway survey team comprising two officers, three junior engineers and six helpers reached Nowgam (later named Srinagar railway station) on a cloudy, uneasy morning. Residents of the area mistook them for a police raid party, causing an already tense situation to almost spiral out of control.
"I had butterflies in my stomach due to sheer anxiety and fear," Gupta recalls in his essay.
For the security of the railway team, the J&K govt had assigned two platoons (60 personnel) of CRPF, a J&K police team and a personal security officer to each member. The weapons they carried included six machine guns.
Every day, a road-opening party would set out ahead of the railway survey team to detect and defuse potential mines.
After studying topography sheets and fixing the track alignment with survey instruments over weeks, Gupta and Sapra drove the first two wooden pegs into the ground to mark the project's first alignment.
"It felt like we had planted a dream," recalls Sapra.
As winter's grip tightened, the survey progressed through Pampore and Kakapora. The first snowfall of 1997 came on Nov 27, halting work by Dec 15. The team would return in April 1998 to resume work.
"On our days off from work, we hunted for vegetarian food in Srinagar. However, the CRPF wasn't happy about our venturing out of the holiday home complex," reminisces Gupta.
During the survey in Anantnag, the team would run into surrendered militants still carrying AK-47s. "They looked intimidating, but didn't do us harm; in fact, they seemed encouraging," says Gupta.
By Oct 31, 1998, the Qazigund-Baramulla survey report was ready. The railway team didn't just beat the odds; they completed the task ahead of schedule.
Next challenge beckons
After the Baramulla-Qazigund section, Sapra and his colleagues were asked to survey the proposed Katra-Qazigund stretch.
That was in 2001. Former railway minister Nitish Kumar laid the foundation for this portion two years later.
"During the survey, we closely observed how difficult life was for people of the Valley. Pregnant women, critically ill patients and elderly people would be brought down from hilly terrain on makeshift palanquins as there were no roads. Mules and horses were the only modes of transport to ferry goods," recalls Sapra.
Just when things seemed to be going well, tragedy struck on June 25, 2004, when IRCON engineer R N Pundhir and his brother were kidnapped and killed by terrorists at Sugan in Shopian.
"It was a jolt. Work paused. But buoyed by local sympathy and police support, the railway men restarted with the same zeal," writes Bhanu Prakash, the then deputy chief engineer of USBRL, in his memoir.
The first trial run in Oct 2008, from Budgam to Kakapora, was a milestone in more ways than one.
A Hindu priest, a Muslim cleric and a Sikh granthi presided over prayers together before the first train rolled at 30kmph. "Locals lined up along the tracks and children skipped school to see the trial run. Even the cattle seemed puzzled!" recounts Bhanu.
By the time the Qazigund-Baramulla section was commissioned in 2009, the tracks were ready for trains running at speeds up to 100kmph.
Such a long journey
Built at a cost of around Rs 44,000 crore, including a parallel highway, the 272km rail route has 36 tunnels spanning 119km, and 943 bridges, including the world's highest, the Chenab Bridge.
The engineering marvel soars 359 metres above the Chenab riverbed.
The rail route promises all-weather connectivity, slashing the 800km Delhi-Srinagar journey to under 13 hours on Vande Bharat Express trains.
This isn't just a story of steel tracks, concrete arches and staggering statistics. USBRL is an odyssey of railway personnel and construction workers fighting the elements and logistical nightmares, braving the threat of guns, and enduring separation from their families for long periods to finally "connect" Kashmir to the rest of India.