India Bangladesh new rail treaty

[jis]

From Bangladesh news 24:

Maitree Express runs for three more years

New Delhi, May 6 (bdnews24.com)—Bangladesh and India have clinched a deal finalising the alignment for the proposed Akhaura-Agartala rail-link.

The two neighbours also renewed the bilateral agreement for running Maitree Express between Kolkata and Dhaka for three more years.

Read the complete news report here.

In a separate news article in Bengali (which would be pointless to post here since no one would be able to read it) it is stated that the agreement includes replacing on shore customs and immigration which now consumes a total of 3 hours, to on board inspection, which should reduce the total scheduled run of the train by over 2 hours.

To get some idea of the lay of the land see this schematic diagram:

The train mentioned in the article takes the route Kolkata - Ranaghat - Gede - Dhaka. It is pulled by an (Indian) Eastern Railway 25kV 50Hz Electric or a ALCO manufactured under license in India Diesel Electric from Kolkata to Gede, and thence it is pulled by a Bangladesh Railway Diesel Electric engine. It crosses the Jamuna river on the newly constructed road cum dual gauge railway bridge which is 5 km long.

You can see Agartala on the little bit of India sticking into Bangladesh on the right hand side of the map. The proposed line connects across the border to the black line shown in the schematic.

 

[DET63]

This is "simplified"? I'd hate to see the "un-simplified" version.

 

[jis]

And to think that in India while growing up we were envious of the rail density in eastern US back then!

A more to scale non-schematic map of about 2/3rds of th area shown in the schematic can be found here.

 

[PerRock]

interesting, they labeled the state of "Meghalaya" incorrectly, it's marked as "Shillong" which is in fact tha capital of Meghalaya, not the state it's self.

peter