?
But anyhow that is why if you hike Mana Pass etc you evade hiking, biking weekend warriors from Delhi, Jhumri Tilaiya and so on. There nobody bothers you and the snow leopard is the only one watching you.
Karthik S wrote: Sir, any updates on Chennai Bangalore HSR project? Germans submitted feasibility study to IR in Nov last year, nothing much after that.
I have heard nothing. The best you can hope for is the third rake of Train 18 will run on the Chennai-Bangalore route. The second rake of Train 18 has headed to Delhi to be the backup rake and provide maintenance downtime for the existing rake.
Sadly now the truth has also come out that was so obvious that the DFCC projects are all heavily delayed and now completion put back to Dec 2021. This was evident to anyone who even looked at Google Earth and seen that it was impossible for a March 2020 completion that Goyal was crowing about. LA is not complete in MH and even in UP, leave alone large tracts in WB. Dec 2021 is just the part outside WB. If you include WB who knows a new Govt. in WB will have to come and help in land acquisition. Major bridges across Narmada, Tapi and Sabarmati show poor progress and there is Fadnavis not helping with LA. In UP the Rail over rail bridge at Etawah between Kanpur and Delhi is not ready and this is troublesome. This was assured by Goyal in his presser 2 months before the election to be done by April 2019.
 Here is the latest. A few days ago a 66km section of the Khurja-Bhadan section of the EDFC was charged by a TSS(traction sub-station) being turned on near Tundla Jn. So this is a 66km section in a 190km section that has been charged. Mind you when with great fanfare the Khurja-Bhadan section was opened, it was fake, the OHE was not ready and loop lines at stations not complete. Watch Goyal lie through his teeth in a presser with Lohani Railway board chair before elections. Then see videos of incomplete loop lines, no OHE equipment installed etc.
All that ullu banoing has caught up, the new deadlines are Palanpur-Madar Dec 2019, Palanpur-JNPT Dec 2021 on WDFC, Kanpur-Mughalsarai Dec 2021, Mughalsarai-Son Nagar Dec 2021, Nitishua not cooperating. This 120km was the first started a long long time ago and the last to be finished, what the heck is going on.
Last edited by vsunder on 31 May 2019 20:51, edited 1 time in total.
BRO is viewed as a corrupt organization which does shoddy work. Look I am just reporting what people told me. These are local Uttarkhandis who drive taxis and make tea and serve simple meals along the main road Joshimath-Rishikesh. When you are with a guide and your life sometimes depends on him and the porter at altitude for days you talk and talk and I just listen. Their complaint is that they do not fix things for good, just patchwork and the problem will repeat. They will show you a spot and tell you this is a bad spot, mud comes down here every monsoon and last season, see that big rock there, that rolled down and BRO did this small thing and never fixed the problem.
I had one particularly scary experience. At Harsil near Gangotri(they bring down the image of Ganga mayya from Gangotri to Harsil for the winter), (also by Gangotri I mean where the road ends, you have to hike quite bit from Gangotri to Gaumukh and need a permit to do the hike so beware, dont just land up with gear and say I will now start hiking, there is a board that warns you, you need a permit, though I bet sadhu babas dont ever get asked for one, but some petty official will harrass you seeing you are not a sadhu baba). OK back to the other story. A tanker and a truck got stuck on the narrow mountain road with traffic blocked. Each guy was trying to reverse with a hundred people giving contradictory advice, typical Indian chaos. Me watching this with a bemused expression. Fine, but when the two were moving sparks were flying from the tanker rubbing against the guard rails with a steep drop to eternity to the Bhagirathi flowing in the gorge. I expected the tanker to explode in a gigantic fireball and make sheesh kebab of us all. Everybody was totally nonchalant. Then somebody broke the guard rail and the tanker got enough room to manouever out of the way from the truck and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. I remember that before this event we had stopped and bought apples from a road side vendor, sweetest ones I have eaten in a long time. An Italian cyclist came by, had been cycling from HP, and knew very good Hindi and he also bought some. Harsil area has some nice apple orchards.
New station redevelopment at Bengaluru.
^^^ 1. DFFCIL have ceased updating trimonthly progress and have now become silent for close to a year, no updates.
2. Suddenly in Dec 2018 they brought out what they called Volume 1 of a journal where in the opening pages (in fact page 2) they gave timelines where the DFC, both Eastern and Western arms except the WB section was to be finished by March 2020.
3. Now within 5 months of publication of this "journal", they meaning DFCC have tweeted completion dates and time lines that project completion in Dec 2021. I mean within 5-6 months how can completion go back by 2 years. Why wait for the election to be over to make this announcement?
4. On sections claimed to be completed in Dec 2018, one has videos from Jan 2019, and March 2019, showing incomplete loop lines, OHE work pending, no wiring for sure but also missing poles.
5. Sections where completion dates were announced within a month in the Goyal presser now are tweeted by DFC themselves to be completed in 1.5 years. This is total nonsense.
6. Google Earth shows work is way behind schedule on major bridges.
If people are gaga with this Goyal, good luck to you. He seems to me quite unprofessional with no control on his ministry.
Notice the first two items in the journal in Dec 2018, listing two sections as completed 194 km Khurja-Bhadan on EDFC and Ateli-Madar on WDFC as completed. Now the tweets AFTER the election just say trial run so the completed sections were not completed after all and the public was misled prior to the election. I am using official documents only.
Now the videos, one near Daud Khan (Aligarh) (video posted Jan 24, 2019) on the so-called completed section of EDFC, Khurja-Bhadan, note incomplete loop lines and OHE and another video near Khurja ( video posted March 2019) on EDFC same story, all videos in Jan 2019 and March 2019, well after the Dec 2018 publication date of the DFCCIL journal.
Thats bad. Either Goyel is just trying to please his boss or the babus are taking him for a ride.
He is a task master and no-nonsense kind of guy who gets initial result but general lack of trust and inability to differentiate between good and bad apples means problem later for a hands off approach.
Sad news about Goyal, what a disappointment, had high hopes for him. Lets see.
How is the buzz on Mme Sitharaman?
Do we have to put Gadkari in charge to get the Railways going?
Piyush Goyal is on Twitter. Why not give him and the MOS a chance to respond directly? Present the questions respectfully, ask for more clarity. It does not benefit this forum to be a silo sitting around in judgment of the world without engaging it actively by means now available quite easily.
He is also on quora detailing various projects.
i read cheen was planning or starting on a very complex railway line directly from yunnan across never ending rugged terrain to connect to Lhasa on a route north and east of arunachal. it would entail unheard of scale in bridges and tunnels.
they are also building a very strategic line from chengdu toward lhasa across equally rugged terrain.
the spate of news media pieces and ads extolling the indian railways over the past year left a suspicious taste in my mouth.
eastern tibet and that region of china bears the headwaters of the salween and irrawaddy river systems which flow through all of the landmass further south. but is very rugged terrain and even cities like chongqing are built in narrow valleys and tall structures with lack of adequate areas for roads.
Officials told TOI they were holding talks with Southern Railway to bring 25 million litres per day (MLD) to the city, which is less than 5% of what Metrowater supplies now. All the four reservoirs that used to supply drinking water to the city have dried up.
"The plan is to transport treated water from Jolarpet in Vellore to Villivakkam in Chennai. It is estimated to cost Rs 154.3 crore towards hiring charges for the wagons and pumping, treatment and distribution,” said an official. Fifty wagons will be employed, each carrying 50,