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Konkan Railways Introduction

Mumbai - Veer - Khed - Chiplun - Ratnagiri - Rajapur Road - Sindhudurg - Mapusa Road - Goa - Udupi - Mangalore - Kochi - Thiruvananthapuram

A Maze Of Tunnels
The journey is breathtaking. Travelling by train on a 30-metre high embankment, you suddenly shoot through a tunnel over 3-km long, emerge for a brief moment on terra firma, then rush on to a bridge over a deep gorge. In winter, a stream bursts below you; in summer, the red earth snakes endlessly on. Catch your breath for a moment; for suspended 50 odd metres above the ground, the train travels downwards into yet another tunnel, this one more than 6-km long. In about three minutes you are out again, crossing a bridge over 65m high, the height of a 15-storeyed building. The landscape of the Panval River below defies description.

You are in Ratnagiri district in southern Maharashtra on the Konkan Railway, the largest railway project in the world in the last five decades and the largest in South Asia this century. The Rs. 2,000-crore railway project connects the coastal areas of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka, opening up the picturesque West Coast of India to the train-travelling tourist for the first time.

For the Indian Railways, it’s the last frontier. The network has been expanding at the rate of 1,000 miles a year since the first line was opened from Boribunder to Thane on April 16, 1853. But though the tracks spanned 53,596-kms across the subcontinent by the time India became independent in 1947, there was one important missing link. The broad gauge line from the south reached Mangalore by 1907, but the more direct 1,000-kms coastal route between Mumbai (Bombay) and Mangalore remained unbridged.

Mission Accomplished
As far back as 1882, a survey had been conducted on the feasibility of a railway line along the picturesque out into estuaries, and in the monsoon, rice paddies turned to lakes, it was nightmare country for the engineers, a never ending chain of foothills of the Western Ghats from which innumerable rivers flowed out into the Arabian Sea.

But since 1991, between the Ghats on the east and the Arabian Sea to the west 25,000 workers have been toiling day and night- blasting through rock, breathing the foul air of underground shafts, pitting themselves against a breathtaking but unrelenting terrain.

The entire Western Coast of India has so far been dependent on a single arterial road, National Highway 17, which is now saturated and badly damaged by the rains. Now, the Konkan Railways have become a much-needed alternative in traversing this belt. The Konkan Railway, a broad gauge single line, extends from Mumbai through the backward areas between Roha and Mangalore, a distance of 760-km of these, 382-km lie in Maharashtra, 105-km in Goa and 273-km in Karnataka.

There are 53 stations on the line, the more important ones being Veer, Khed, Chiplun, Ratnagiri, Rajapur Road, Sindhudurg, Mapusa Road, Goa, Udupi, Mangalore, among others. From southern Karnataka, the Konkan Railway has built a connection with Kerala on the central railway line that extends to Kochi (Cochin) and Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum).

Creating New Inroads For Tourism And Industry
Apart from tourism, Indian industry benefits enormously as well, with the railway allowing for reasonable and speedy transport of raw material, finished products and human resources, and linking major and minor ports along the western coast. With this much-needed infrastructure provided, the Konkan stretch rich in minerals such as Iron Ore, Bauxite, Chromite, Manganese and Silica Sand, is expected to see much industrial and economic development.

Already initiated are large investments for developing power such as the approximately 1,000 mega-watt thermal power plant at Mangalore and the Dabhol Power Plant in southern Maharashtra. Petroleum industries are initiated at Mangalore, Devagarh near Chiplun and Nagothane near Roha, and a steel plant also at Mangalore. The state of Kerala is promoting specially dedicated industrial and technical parks, a southern states power grid and a liquefied natural gas plant. This coupled with the availability of manpower, will tap the abundant resources of this region.




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