Guwahati: In a major milestone, tunnel no. T-04/P2 (3948 meters long) to the Adit of the Sivok–Rangpo Rail Project (SRRP), located in the Darjeeling District of West Bengal, achieved a breakthrough on Wednesday (May 8).
With the tunnel breakthrough, mining activities have been successfully accomplished in all the Adit tunnels of this project.
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The length of the Main Tunnel of T-04 is 3948 meters, along with an Evacuation Tunnel of length 599 meters situated near the Hanuman Jhora in Darjeeling District, West Bengal.
The Main Tunnel traverses through vulnerable and challenging geological and seismic conditions of the Younger Himalayas.
Like all other tunnels in the SRRP, to counter the vulnerability of the groundmass, the latest and most sophisticated tunnelling technology, i.e., the New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM) has been used here.
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The Sivok–Rangpo new rail link project connecting Sivok (West Bengal) and Rangpo (Sikkim) is about 45 km long and is characterized by 14 nos. tunnels, 13 major bridges, nine minor bridges and five stations.
The length of the longest tunnel (T-10) is 5.3 km and the length of the longest bridge (Br-17) is 425 meters.
About 38.65 km of the entire project alignment is passing through tunnels. 93 per cent of the tunnelling work has already been completed.
At present final lining has been completed in tunnels T-14 and T-09 and work is under progress in tunnels T-02, T-03, T-05, T-06, T-07, T-10, T-11 and T-12. A total of 13.13 km of lining has been completed to date.
Work in all sections is being carried out round the clock 24×7. This is one of the most prestigious ongoing National Projects in India and on completion of this project, first time the state of Sikkim will be connected via railways.
This rail network on its completion is aimed to provide alternate and stable connectivity to the state of Sikkim.
At present all the activities related to the construction of tunnels, bridges and station yards are going on war footing for early completion of the project.