India's Longest Tunnel Inagurated

India's longest rail tunnel in Kashmir to provide a key link between the Kashmir Valley and Jammu region inaugurated by PM on 26/06/0213. The 18-km-long Banihal-Qazigund rail link, which includes the country’s longest transportation tunnel – over 11-km long – through the Pir Panjal range, was executed by Ircon at a cost of Rs 1,672 crore.

Tunnel - 11kms

The rail bridge between Udhampur and Banihal -- the train runs through the Pir Panjal mountain range -- is the highest in the world. An engineering marvel that took seven years to come up in a mountainous region. The tunnel has been constructed using New Austrian Tunnelling Method, which has been used for the first time on such a large scale in India

The new train also narrows the link gap between the 64,000-km rail network spread across the country and the 135-km network in the Kashmir Valley, which is yet to be connected with the vast Indian Railway network.

India's Longest Tunnel Opens in Kashmir