Grand Chord

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Grand Chord
Overview
System Electrified
Status Operational
Locale West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar,
Uttar Pradesh
Termini Sitarampur
Mughalsarai
Operation
Opened 1907
Owner Indian Railway
Operator(s) Eastern Railway, East Central Railway
Technical
Line length 450 km (280 mi)
No. of tracks 2/3
Track gauge 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) Broad Gauge
Operating speed up to 160 km/h
[ ]
Grand Chord
Track gauge: Broad gauge 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in)
to Delhi
Mughalsarai
to Sitarampur via Main line
More information: Gaya-Mughalsarai section
Chandauli
Karmanasa River
UP-Bihar border
Bhabua Road
Sasaram
Dehri-on-Sone
Nehru Setu on Son River
Son Nagar
to Barkakhana
Anugrah Narayan Road
Gaya
to Patna
River Phalgu
to Lakhisarai
More information: Asansol-Gaya section
Jharkhand-Bihar border
Gujhandi
Koderma
to Hazaribagh and Barkakana (under construction)
Barakar River flowing → north
Hazaribagh Road
Parasnath
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Junction Gomoh
to Bokaro Steel City and Barkhakana
to Adra
Dhanbad
Barakar River flowing ← south
Jharkhand-West Bengal border
to Mughalsarai via Main line
Sitarampur
to Asansol


Grand Chord- also known as The Life line of India is a section of the Indian Railways and is one of the two parts of the main Delhi-Howrah route. It acts as a link between Sitarampur, (West Bengal) and Mughal Sarai, Uttar Pradesh, and covers a stretch of 450 km.[1] It is a fully electrified, triple line section from Mughalsarai to Dehri-on-sone and double line section from Dehri-on-sone to Asansol. The Grand chord section is the lifeline of the country on which Coal, Steel and other important goods are moved from Eastern section to Western and Northern sections of the country. In the down direction, the traffic consists of mostly food grains, fertilizers and empty wagons for coal loading in the Bihar and West Bengal coal fields. Mughalsarai is a transit division and the main objective is to maintain mobility of high density traffic. The present capacity of the Grand Chord is being optimally utilized. Traversing through Chhota Nagpur plateau of Jharkhand as well as parts of the fertile Gangetic plains of Bihar, the Grand Chord covers a stretch of 450 km.

The railways first came to eastern India in 1854, and the Calcutta–Delhi railway link, with a distance of more than 1636 km, became operational by 1866. With the increase in traffic it became necessary to construct an alternative route.

With this in view, The Grand Chord section was planned. The Grand Chord section was opened in December, 1906 by Lord Minto, then Viceroy and Governor General of India with a function at Gujahandi.[1] With the opening of the Grand Chord route, the distance between Calcutta and Delhi was reduced by 80 km. The cost of construction was around Rs. 41,500,000.[2]

The Grand Chord section is critically important even today, handling major passenger trains on the Howrah-Delhi route, particularly all the Rajdhani Expresses from Howrah, Bhubaneswar and Ranchi and the entire freight traffic, particularly coal, handled by the Dhanbad division of East Central Railway.

Eastern Freight Corridor [edit]

The Eastern Corridor encompasses a double line electrified traction corridor from Haldia on the Eastern Railway to Khurja on the North Central Railway (1270 km) Via Grand Chord, Khurja to Dadri on NCR Double Line electrified corridor (46 km) and Single electrified line from Khurja to Ludhiana (412 km) on Northern Railway. The total length works out to 1379 km. So in the grand Chord section its total 4 parallel track will be run to ease traffic movement on this busy route.

The Eastern Corridor will traverse 6 states and is projected to cater to a number of traffic streams - coal for the power plants in the northern region of U.P., Delhi, Harayana, Punjab and parts of Rajasthan from the Eastern coal fields, finished steel, food grains, cement, fertilizers, lime stone from Rajasthan to steel plants in the east and general goods. The total traffic in UP direction is projected to go up from 38 million tonnes in 2005-06 to 116 million tonnes in 2021-22.

Trains on the route [edit]

At one time in the 70's it was said that a goods train passes by every 20 minutes on the Grand Chord line. Now it has been reduced to between 5 minutes making it one of the busiest routes in India. More than 50 mail/express trains use this shorter route apart from 2 dozens of Passengers Trains.

Some Important Trains are-

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  • Howrah - Jabalpur Express
  • Howrah - Amritsar Express
  • Anand Vihar - Haldia Exp ress

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b "The Grand `old' Chord". The Hindu. 12/04/2006. 
  2. ^ "Grand rerun of Raj rail route - Railways enact Lord Minto’s flag-off at Gujhandi to celebrate 100 years of Dhanbad-Gaya chord line". The Telegraph (Kolkata). 12/07/2006. 
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