Within 5 hours! Railway sets record by building a subway in a busy track; Watch how!

Hyderabad, July 6: Shutting mouths who were pointing fingers at the slow working of Indian Railways, the department has created a record-breaking initiative. In a massive accomplishment, the Waltair Division of the East Coast Railway managed to construct a large subway under a four-line railway crossing within a record time of four and a half hours.

The East Coast Railway has created a record by completing a subway construction at a busy railway track between Pendurthi and Kothavalasa line in Andhra Pradesh in less than five hours. The level crossing number 484 between Kothavalasa and Pendurthi was a manned level crossing until now.

The general time in the country for constructing a limited height subway ranges from 6 to 8 hours for two lines, while the Waltair Division built a subway running under four lines in less than 5 hours, an accomplishment that was achieved with substantial planning and mobilization of resources.

 

The initiative was taken as part of the Railways’ plan to eliminate manned and unmanned crossing gates in several places across the country. While the subway was completed roughly one and a half months ago, the approach road was recently completed and thrown open to traffic, thereby eliminating the manned level crossing that existed earlier.

The area people have been hailing the Railways achievement for completing the Limited Height Subway project in record time. A social media user said that in April 2017 too, the East Coast Railway Zone had set a record by completing a limited height subway between Ramamurthy Panthulu Peta and Visakhapatnam in just 3 hours and 30 minutes.

The Railways authorities used 16 heavy duty excavators, three heavy duty cranes, five tippers (truck), 1,000 sandbags, four hydra machines, heavyweight jacks, and a workforce of as many as 300 people to complete the task in just over four hours.

The official said that to save time, the boxes were lifted from both sides and placed at the requisite location while the earthwork was on. "It took an hour to place all the 20 boxes, 1.5 hours to place base slabs after building the surface and the linking of the track, and the total block was completed in 4 hours and 30 minutes,'' said the ECR official. Though the Railways constructed the subway in less than five hours, the approach road here was constructed in one and a half month.