The 58-km-long new railway line, laid between Raichur and Gadwal by the South Central Railway, will be commissioned by Union minister for railways Mallikarjun Kharge at the Raichur railway station on Saturday.
He will also flag off the inaugural run of new DEMU passenger train, 77690/94 Raichur-Gadwal-Kacheguda DEMU. The new line will enable the people of Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh to go to Raichur in bordering Karnataka to catch express trains bound for Mumbai, Chennai, Kanyakumari, etc.
SCR officials told Express that SCR was making efforts to expand the rail network in the zone. The laying of the 58-km-long Raichur-Gadwal broad gauge line at a cost of Rs 300 crore is part of that endeavour.
Raichur is on the Guntakal-Mumbai main line in Guntakal division and Gadwal on the Dhone-Kacheguda main line in Hyderabad division.
For laying the line 265 hectares of land was acquired. Since the railway line running through a topography of plateau, it has banks with a maximum height of 14.65 metres and cuttings with a maximum depth of 8.96 metres involving a huge volume of earth works. Permanent way is laid with new and sturdy 52-kg rails and new pre-stressed concrete sleepers with M+7 density on main lines with adequate ballast cushioning as per standard specifications.
There are three railway stations on the new line _ Chandrabanda (halt) in Karnataka, Pandurangaswamy Road (crossing station) and Priyadarshini Jurala Project Road (halt) in AP. There are five level crossings, three manned and two unmanned, and 186 bridges including road overbridges and road underbridges on the new section. These include 15 major and 171 minor bridges. These apart, there are 14 canal crossings, of which four have been completed.
Of the five major road overbridges, the construction of three has been completed and work on two is in progress. Of the 23 road underbridges, two major and 21 minor, 21 have been built.