Agartala: The days are not far when people of landlocked state- Tripura could be able to board super-fast trains like Rajdhani or Northeast Express from Agartala itself.
If everything goes as per the plan, Agartala would be brought in the country’s Broad Gauge (BG) rail network by early next year with BG conversion work making good progress.
We are expecting to end the construction of two major tunnels at NC Hills by end of September and there will be no train service from October, 2014 to March 2015 in between Lumding to Agartala to speed up the BG conversion work, said General Manager of Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) RS Birji here on Friday.
“Once the conversion work is done from Lumding to Agartala, the BG rail service will start- probably by April/ May”, Birji who visited arrived here to review the progress of he conversion work, said.
Birji who was accompanied by Chief Engineer (Construction) MS Lamba and DRS Rakesh Kumar, said he is worried about the construction work of two tunnels at NC Hill section. “We are on the move to construct two tunnels- one is 3 km and another is 5 km to pave the way for BG conversion project at the earliest”, he said.
Asserting that major improvement in the rail service could not be possible in the Meter-Gauge rail network, he said the NFR has been giving priority to speed up BG conversion work so that people of the region could be benefited.
Birji, who left the state along with other officials on Saturday morning, further said running of Hill Queen train is not possible up to Agartala. Even the possibility of running one pair train in between Agartala- Dharmanagar is not remote.
Claiming that the rail service has made good progress in the region, Birji said people of Tripura would be able to catch super-fast trains like Ranjdhani or Northeast Express once the BG conversion work is completed.
After completing the BG conversion work, the NFR would speed up the rail extension work from Agartala to Sabroom with BG facility.
“Once we that the railway extension work would be done up to Udaipur in first phase but now a decision has been taken to take up the entire project- up to Sabroom simultaneously. And that’s why Railway officials are making frequent visit to Tripura”, he added.
