Pollachi-Podanur line Gauge Conversion reaches last Kilometer.

Work on the gauge conversion of the Pollachi-Podanur line has reached the last stretch, said railway officials here on Wednesday. They are now working on the last kilometre of the 40km route. The conversion of the track from metre guage to broad guage will be complete by this December. The completion of the project will make travelling to and from Pollachi not only faster, but also safer.

Railway officials confirmed that the project would be completed by 2016-end. They said guage conversion of 39km stretch between the two stations is already complete. “Work on the last one km stretch is going on. We are deep cutting a rock which is around 40ft deep between Chettipalayam and Kinathukidavu,” said a senior engineer in charge of the project.

Work on gauge conversion between Pollachi and Podanur, which is part of the 160km route from Dindigul to Podanur, began way back in 2009. The project faced a host of issues ranging from funding and land acquisition to a rocky terrain that they had to cut through to lay the new track.

The cost of the whole project was 900 crore, with the Pollachi-Podanur stretch alone costing 300 crore. “However, the funds kept coming in bursts which impeded work. The terrain between Pollachi and Podanur also had massive rocks and boulders which had to be blasted or deep cut to clear the path,” said the engineer.

Once this track comes through, the thousands of people who commute regularly between Pollachi and Coimbatore for work can take the train, reducing travel time to just 40 minutes as opposed to the one hour long bus ride on the congested and accident prone Coimbatore-Pollachi Road. This will also reduce the train journey time between Coimbatore and Madurai from the existing five-and-a-half hours to four hours. “This will include a change of trains in Dindigul but without hassle,” said the Madurai division spokesperson.

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