Workers celebrate the breakthrough of the Adit to Tunnel no. T-01 of the ongoing Sivok-Rangpo Rail Project (SRRP) located in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal on November 29. (Photo Courtesy: CPRO NFR).
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Guwahati, November 30 (MExN): A major milestone was achieved in the ongoing Sivok-Rangpo Rail Project (SRRP) located in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, with a breakthrough of the Adit to Tunnel no. T-01 on November 29, informed by the Northeast Frontier Railway(NFR). With this tunnel breakthrough, mining activities have been successfully completed in all the adit-tunnels of the project, it maintained.
The length of the main tunnel is 4224 metres, along with an evacuation tunnel of length 855 metres situated near the Coronation Bridge in the Darjeeling district.
According to the NFR, the tunnel traverses through vulnerable and challenging geological and seismic conditions of the Younger Himalayas and like all other tunnels in the SRRP, the latest and most sophisticated New Austrian Tunneling Method (NATM) was used to counter the vulnerability of the ground mass. The SRRP project, connecting Sivok (West Bengal) and Rangpo (Sikkim), is about 45 km long and is characterised by 14 tunnels, 17 bridges, and 5 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. Approximately 38 km of the entire project alignment passes through tunnels, and 88% of tunnelling work has already been completed. At present, the final lining has been completed in tunnel T-14 and is in progress in tunnels T-02, T-05, T-06, T-09, T-10, T-11, and T-12. A total of 7.49 km of lining has been completed to date, and work in all sections is being carried out round the clock, 24x7, the NFR maintained. Once completed, Sikkim would be connected via railways for the first time.
