India get its longest ‘escape tunnel’; here’s all that you need to know

The Indian Railways recently completed a tunnel on the 111 km under-construction Banihal-Katra section of the Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) in Jammu and Kashmir. The 12.89 km tunnel is touted as the longest ‘escape tunnel’ of India. Here are some important things that you need to know about this longest escape tunnel of the country.

If reports are to go by, the tunnel has been built to facilitate the rescue work in case of an emergency, The railway officials informed that the track passes through the Ramban formation of the Himalayas and apart from this, various distributaries of Chenab river like Hingni, Khoda, Kundan nallah cross all along the alignment, which made drilling a highly challenging task.
Reportedly, this is the fourth tunnel on the Banihal-Katra route; in January this year, a 12.75 km tunnel called T-49 was also completed. The New Austrian tunnelling method (NATM) built this tunnel, using a modern technique of blast and drill processes.

The horseshoe-shaped escape tunnel will be connecting the Sumber station yard on the south side and tunnel T-50 as per the government release. The elevation of the south end at Sumber is around 1400.5 m, whereas the north end is 1558.84 m.
Tunnel T-49 is a twin tube tunnel that comprises the main tunnel (12.75 km) and escape tunnel connected with 33 cross-passages, as per the railways.

The Banihal-Katra section has been built as part of the USBRL project and, out of the total 272 km of the project, 161 km has already been commissioned and is in operation.