 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Grand Chord" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(December 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Grand Chord is part of theHowrah–Gaya–Delhi line andHowrah–Prayagraj–Mumbai line. It acts as a link betweenSitarampur, (Asansol) (West Bengal) andPt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction (Uttar Pradesh), previously known as Mughalsarai Junction, and covers a stretch of 450.7 km (280.1 mi).[1] TheCoal India Corridor line that branches off fromDhanbad Junction and rejoins the Grand Chord atSon Nagar Junction is another major coal loading hub. It is a fully electrified, quadruple line section from Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay to Son Nagar and double line section from Son Nagar to Sitarampur. There are plans to triple the lines from Son Nagar to Dhanbad to accommodate the increasing traffic. . The entire line lies under the jurisdiction of three divisions,Mughalsarai railway division,Dhanbad railway division andAsansol railway division. The Grand chord section is the lifeline of the country, 2nd busiest railway section of India afterGhaziabad,Uttar Pradesh toPt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction,Uttar Pradesh (previously known as Mughalsarai Junction) Main Line section, 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 Jharkhand and West Bengal coal fields.Pt. Deen Dayal Upadhyay Junction 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 throughChota Nagpur Plateau ofJharkhand as well as parts of the fertileGangetic plains ofBihar, the Grand Chord covers a stretch of 450.7 km (280.1 mi). The Grand Chord is renowned for its remarkable controlling of passenger traffic, despite being burdened with freight traffic.
The railways first came to eastern India in 1854, and theCalcutta–Delhi railway link, with a distance of more than 1,642 km (1,020 mi), 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 byLord Minto, thenViceroy and Governor-General of India with a function at Gujahandi.[1] With the opening of the Grand Chord route, the distance betweenCalcutta andDelhi was reduced by 192 km (119 mi). The cost of construction was around₹415 lakh (equivalent to₹14 billion or US$160 million in 2023).[2]
The Grand Chord section is critically important even today, handling major passenger trains on the Howrah–Delhi route, particularly all theRajdhani Expresses fromHowrah,Bhubaneswar andRanchi and the entire freight traffic, particularly coal, handled by the Dhanbad division of East Central Railway.
TheEastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (Eastern DFC) encompasses a double-line electrified traction corridor fromHaldia on theEastern Railway toKhurja on theNorth Central Railway (1,270 km or 790 mi) via Grand Chord, Khurja toDadri on NCR double-line electrified corridor (46 km or 29 mi) and Single electrified line from Khurja toLudhiana (412 km or 256 mi) onNorthern Railway. The total length works out to 1,379 km (857 mi). So in the Grand Chord section its total 4 parallel track will be run to ease traffic movement on this busy route.
The EDFC will traverse 6 states and is projected to cater to a number of traffic streams – coal for the power plants in the northern region ofUttar Pradesh,Delhi,Haryana,Punjab and parts ofRajasthan from the Eastern coal fields, finished steel, food grains, cement, fertilizers, limestone 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 inFY2005-06 to 116 million tonnes in FY2021–22.
| Authority | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Related organisations |
| ||||||||||||||
| Zones | |||||||||||||||
| Rolling stock |
| ||||||||||||||
| Manufacturing units |
| ||||||||||||||
| Railway depots |
| ||||||||||||||
| Lines |
| ||||||||||||||
| Passenger trains |
| ||||||||||||||
| Stations |
| ||||||||||||||
| Training institutes |
| ||||||||||||||
| Trade unions | |||||||||||||||
| Related articles | |||||||||||||||
