The statutory inspection of the pending 1.5 km stretch of railway line near Srirangapatna – taken up as part of track doubling work between Mysuru and Bengaluru – was completed by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) on Monday.
Though originally scheduled to be held on Saturday, the authorities conducted a spot visit besides the track inspection, complete with speed trials and inspection of the two new railway bridges, across the Cauvery, on Monday.
Sources said the CRS inspection covered all technical issues besides observation of the curvature, points and crossings and no major lacunae have been found. All things being satisfactory, the authorisation for operationalising the track may be issued within a week.
The inspection team comprised Manoharan, (CRS) Southern Region; Ashok Gupta, Chief Administrative Officer (Construction), South Western Railways; A.K. Garg, Chief Bridge Engineer, SWR, Hubballi; S.K. Jain, Chief Engineer, (Construction); and R.S. Saxena, DRM, Bengaluru Division. Consequent to the CRS approval for operationalising the track, the running time between Naganahalli and Pandavpura is expected to further reduce by about 7 to 10 minutes.
The CRS inspection also draws the track doubling work between Mysuru and Bengaluru to a close. While the Bengaluru-Ramanagaram section had been doubled earlier, the Ramanagaram-Mysuru section received administrative clearance in 2007 and the authorities took more than 11 years to complete the doubling work on the 93 km stretch.
Though doubling work along the entire section was completed in 2014, work on the 1.5 km stretch was pending owing to the 18th Century armoury belonging to the era of Tipu Sultan which was located along the alignment of the new track, causing the work to be stalled.
Following permission from the Archaeological Survey of India, the monument was translocated in one piece with expertise from the U.S. in March this year, paving the way for completion of the second track as well.
