With the help of the National Logistics Cell (NLC), Pakistan Railways has nearly finished the rehabilitation and reconstruction work on the vital Sibbi-Harnai railway route, and it will soon be operational.
According to sources in the Ministry of Railways, “the railway track was made dysfunctional after a series of terrorist attacks which damaged as many as 22 steel bridges in the exceedingly rocky and difficult location.”
They said, the track suffered significant damage in 2006, and as of this writing, 97 percent of the project’s rehabilitation work has been finished.
Sources say, Khawaja Saad Rafique, the minister of railways, took a particular interest in the projects and had instructed the relevant official to finish them. A contract for the rehabilitation and restoration of the Sibbi-Harnai railway track as well as the upgrading of railway stations was reportedly awarded to the NLC in March 2016 after no other construction company agreed to take on the project because of the prevailing security situation and the scale of the undertaking.
They said that 22 steel bridges of various sizes that were entirely wrecked and in need of replacement were discovered during the initial examination of the route.
They added that significant river protection work would also be done in order to save the infrastructure. The project was a tremendous challenge due to the sheer amount of work, lack of road access, and necessary resources.
Fabricating steel bridges was the main challenge. The steel bridges were manufactured in Karachi and then painstakingly put together by NLC engineers in a way that was appropriate for the project, they noted.
They said that NLC engineers had completely renovated Sibbi Railway Station, considered to be the best railway station in Balochistan, and rebuilt Harnai Railway Station, making a total of nine railway stations and tracks.