Rail link to border town completed

The Northwestern Railway is all set to open in April the rail link up to Munabao in Barmer district in Rajasthan.

This will be the last station close to the border of Pakistan where the Khokhrapar railway station was once the connecting rail link with Munabao.

"We have already converted the rail track from metre gauge to broad gauge from Barmer to Munabao which is six kilometres from Khokhrapar in Sindh Province on the Pakistan side," S B Gandhi, Senior Deputy Manager and Chief Public Relations Officer, Northwestern Railway, Jaipur Division, told Gulf News. Though talks between India and Pakistan on the opening of the rail route from Munabao to Khokhrapar has not made much head way, the Indian Railway has converted the tracks to broad gauge.

Even if the green signal is given for the rail link between the two countries, "it is not possible to travel by rail to Pakistan since Khokhrapar has not converted to broad gauge. This means passengers will have to travel the short distance by bus to arrive at Khokhrapar railway station," Gandhi said.

He says this was a popular route up to 1965 with families on both sides of the border travelling frequently between Jodhpur and Karachi. "In the past, the royal families of Jodhpur and Karachi often visited each other by travelling on this route," he said.

"But after the Indo-Pakistan war in 1965, the rail link was snapped and they (Pakistan) uprooted the tracks," he added. If Pakistan railways have to convert its line to broad gauge, it would take at least five years.

The Samdari-Barmer newly converted section of 130 kilometres as a part of Luni-Barmer-Munabao Gauge Conversion Project was opened on August 26 last year. The Luni-Samdari section of 50 kilometres has already been converted to broad gauge and opened on December 14, 2002. Further gauge conversion work on the Jasai-Munabao (99 km) line is in progress and will be completed in three months.