Railway Board’s disastrous engineering performance in the past 20 years

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COMPILATION OF LINKS OF TWEETS ON THE PROJECTS OF BUILDING LINES IN HIMALAYAS

By Alok Kumar Verma IRSE (Retd.)

This is a compilation of my posts of the past one year on Twitter on the various topics concerning Railway Board’s disastrous engineering performance in the past 20 years in its bid to build lines in Himalayas.

These posts cover the under construction Kashmir Rail Link, Rishikesh-Karnaprayag, & the 5 projects in the North East, and also the following 2 projects which are in the stage of alignment survey – Bilaspur-Manali-Leh & the plan to build the lines to the Char Dham.

With this compilation you would be able to easily access all my posts. For the latest posts, please go to the end of the list.

At the heart of this failure lies Railway Board’s unrelenting tendency of sanctioning projects and starting construction on alignments that were prepared only on topographic data, ignoring completely the all important geological & geotechnical factors on which depends constructability, stability and safety of a railway line in these mountainous regions of weak rock formations, and unstable landslide prone slopes.

This disregard of the geohazards has resulted in alignments with flat gradient of 1 in 100 or 1 in 80 which are full of large bridges, high cuttings and tunnels at shallow depth under the slope surface in unfavourable rock formations.

Railway Board seems to be on way to finally giving up the disastrous limit of 1 in 80 on ruling gradient.

For the plan to build the Bilaspur-Leh-Manali line, it has approved alignment with 1 in 44 ruling gradient for the ongoing Final Location Survey (FLS), which happens to be the same gradient which I adopted for my alternative alignment for the Kashmir Rail Link.

In fact this alignment has been prepared using the basic elements of my alignment methodology for the Kashmir Rail Link, but with two glaring errors – not carrying out geological survey, and ignoring the impact of high altitude (3000-5000 m above MSL) – on constructability of long tunnels.

Northern Railway officers incharge of the ongoing survey came to discuss their alignment with me and I have given them specific suggestions, which include – adoption of steeper ruling gradient of 1 in 35 and to also seriously consider building this line on the much more suitable Meter Gauge.

Gauge is another vital factor. I’ve made two detailed posts on why Broad Gauge (BG) is unsuitable: “Adoption of MG will drastically reduce cost of construction to one-half to one-third of a BG line and provide much improved constructability, stability and safety.”

I will keep updating it..

1/n
Railway Board’s debacle on the Kashmir Rail Link and 6 other new line projects in the Himalayas.

2/n
KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT:
RLY BOARD’S CIRCUS SCALES NEW HEIGHTS AS THE COUNTRY PAYS FOR THE SCUTTLING OF THE REVIEW OF ALIGNMENT IN 2009

Kashmir Rail Link: An engineering project or a circus of the fools by the fools and for the fools

3/n
HAVE ANY LESSONS BEEN LEARNT FROM THE FIASCO ON THE KASHMIR RAIL LINK AND OTHER PROJECTS IN THE HIMALAYAS?

WHAT SORT OF LINES WILL THE COUNTRY GET IF WE CONTINUE CONSTRUCTION ON THE EXISTING ALIGNMENTS & WHAT CAN BE DONE NOW TO SALVAGE THESE PROJECTS

4/n
Kashmir Rail Link Project: New revelations of landslides and structural failures

Hype versus Reality: With revelations of the mega landslide at the construction site at Sumber, prospects of completion recede further by several years

5/n
KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT: HOW RAILWAY BOARD TRIED TO PUNISH AND SILENCE ME FOR MY PROPOSAL FOR CHANGE OF ALIGNMENT

6/n
REPORT OF THE SREEDHARAN COMMITTEE ON THE ALIGNMENT OF THE KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT

6/n
HOW MUCH WORK HAS REALLY BEEN DONE ON THE KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT?

7/9
A Comprehensive Factual Account of How Railway Board Perpetuated and Proliferated a Deeply Flawed Alignment Methodology on 7 National & Strategically Important New Line Projects in the Himalayas

8/n
RAILWAY ENGINEERS’ BLIND SPOT, FROM LUMDING TO LEH: HOW TOP RAILWAY OFFICERS DECIDED TO CONCEAL RAILWAY’S FAILURES IN THE PLANNING AND SURVEY STAGE OF THE KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT

9/n
MEGA FUNCTION AT THE MEGA ARCH BRIDGE

Railway Board Circus at Chenab

10/n
THE CHENAB BRIDGE IS THE FATAL VANITY OF RAILWAY BOARD AND THE REASON WHY THE LINK TO KASHMIR MAY NOT BE COMPLETED EVEN BY 2030, AND STILL CARRY HIGH RISK OF INSTABILITY. WHAT TO TALK OF SKYHIGH CONSTRUCTION COST AND ABYSMALLY LOW LINE CAPACITY!!!!

11/n
Remarkable Arch Bridges of China

12/n
The Remarkable New River Gorge Bridge

13/n
Small but Beautiful Arch Bridge in Meghalaya

14/n
Cable stayed bridge at Anji:

15/n
ALIGNMENT METHODOLOGY FOR BUILDING LINES IN HIMALAYAS: THE BASIC REASONS WHY MY METHODOLOGY IS WORKABLE AND RAILWAY BOARD’S ISN’T

16/n
Splurging money with bridges requiring very large foundations in landslide prone khads

17/n
These are three posts which I made about the high risk of survivability

The deluge

Three questions for the media, 8 April 21

18/9
Scientific explanation of the stability and safety risks on the Kashmir Rail Link alignment

The Himalayas

19/9
Sichuan Tibet Line: China is on to one of the most ambitious rly projects, ever, to build a strategic high-speed line through the Himalayas

20/n
WHY METER GAUGE FOR LINES IN THE HIMALAYAS?

Why Railway Board must consider the option of building lines in the Himalayas on Meter Gauge

Read in the link below why Meter Gauge should have been considered for the Kashmir Rail Link Project.

21/n
Bilaspur Leh Railway: Railway Board risks it’s biggest misadventure in the Himalayas.

22/n
BILASPUR-MANALI-LEH RAILWAY: NORTHERN RAILWAY’S CONSULTATION WITH ME AND MY SUGGESTIONS

23/n
Will Railway be able to prepare a workable alignment for the Manali-Leh line? I stress that by ignoring the geological factors it is impossible to come up with an alignment for a constructable safe and stable railway line in these high-relief regions.

24/n
Rishikesh-Karanprayag Rail Link Project: A disastrous beginning and half measures have seriously compromised this costly project

25/n
The Nagaland Project: To appreciate how badly the Railway Board’s policy of alignment of flat gradient of 1 in 100 is faring on the other projects in Himalayas, let’s look at the Dimapur-Kohima project in Nagaland.

26/n
Char Dham lines to link Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri and Yamunotri with the Indian Railway network

27/n
A flaw of the alignments for 5 of the 7 lines in the Himalayas that is so important that I decided to write a post separately.

28/n
The Railway Projects in the North East of Himalayas to link the capital cities of Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim & Meghalaya with the Indian Railway network: Descending into chaos after disastrous beginnings

He worked diligently and courageously..

29/n
Kashmir Rail Link Project: New revelations of landslides and structural failures

Where is the project headed?

#KashmirRailLinkProject #IndianRailway #RailwayBoard #NorthernRailway