Khanewal- Raiwind railway track work been delayed

Islamabad: The project of dualisation of Khanewal-Raiwind railway track has been delayed for another year, said a railway official. The project was supposed be completed by the end of the current year but some factors including late approval of revised project concept-II (PC-II), shortage of rails and price hike of steel have caused the delay.

The Pakistan Railways has hired the services of the Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) to execute the multi-billion project. He said, previously the project expected to incur Rs5.5 billion but later it exceeded to Rs8.326 billion due to the replacement of old railway track.

The official further added that more or less 29,000 tons of rails would be spread over 246-km long track that includes construction of 87 bridges, out of them 53 have already been completed and the rest would be completed soon.

The railway source also said that it has completed laying of sleepers and rails over the track of about 56-km, would be available for traffic soon. He said the whole project would be ready by the end of 2008. The FWO has completed earthwork on 205-km and ballasting 202-km.

The official said due to installation of state-of-the-art signals, the speed of trains would increase from 105 km to 140 km per hour.