SilverLine route fraught with hurdles

Express News Service

The Railway Board and the Kerala authorities have continued to disregard the extraordinary criticism that the plan for constructing SilverLine as a standalone line on the (British) commonplace gauge is technically infeasible. It is the Centre’s accountability to offer environment friendly rail transport throughout the nation. So, it’s perplexing why the state authorities agreed to the Board’s situation that the state bear full value of this mammoth, technically complicated railway undertaking and likewise its revenue and loss.

Man’s endeavour to climb to the highest of Mt Everest, attain the south pole or circumnavigate the earth by sea couldn’t have succeeded with no good understanding of the challenges that lay forward. The Golmud-Lhasa line to the roof of the world, traversing about 1,000 km of permafrost floor, is a results of years of analysis on the best way to construct an all-weather line on permafrost. A line to hold trains at 200 kmph — twice the velocity of present strains within the area — alongside the antagonistic terrain of mid-highlands of Kerala on a observe gauge considerably narrower than the Indian Broad Gauge would undoubtedly be very difficult.

As per the plan ready by the Kerala Rail Development Corporation Ltd’s (Ok-Rail) basic guide (GC), an organization based mostly in France, SilverLine shall be stuffed with excessive embankments, cuttings and bridges/viaducts and greater than 100 tunnels, most of them on weak floor and unstable slopes of a fancy terrain of alternating wetlands and highlands that has seen devastating floods in three of the previous 4 years. Due to the excessive velocity, the road must be constructed to excessive precision of observe geometry and stability. 

The GC had engaged the creator because the lead guide to information its group of specialists to organize the preliminary feasibility report. The report cautioned Ok-Rail towards constructing SilverLine on commonplace gauge, taking stations to the outskirts of the primary cities — which implies taking the road deeper into the mid-highlands area — for the sake of actual property growth in and across the stations. However, after the creator left, Ok-Rail succeeded in getting the GC to miss the suggestions and put together the (remaining) feasibility report with out the obligatory floor surveys and ridership survey, and used the incorrect topographic information of Google Earth to organize the alignment. The feasibility report was ready in lower than 50 days.

Though the report was ready in violation of its codes of observe, the board granted in-principle approval that carries with it permission to spend as much as `100 crore on pre-construction actions, together with preparations for land acquisition. So a lot for diligence within the planning of this extraordinarily difficult line. 
If the road is constructed on broad gauge, the Railways Ministry should bear many of the value and revenue/loss.

The state plans to finance SilverLine with a 30 to 50-year mortgage with reimbursement beginning after 10 to fifteen years. It begs the query: Should the state construct a line which, contemplating the details of all the planning course of, can be a white elephant whose burden shall be borne by future generations. 

(The creator retired from India Railway Service of Engineers and was the group chief who performed the preliminary feasibility research of SilverLine)

No interoperability
Due to the distinction in gauge, SilverLine can have no linkage to the Railways’ broad gauge community for interoperability of trains. As opposition to the undertaking gained momentum and fudging in preparation of feasibility report and DPR was revealed, the Railways Ministry refused to share any monetary liabilities for the standalone line.