Guduru (AP): Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu here on Sunday dedicated the country's longest electrified rail tunnel between Cherlopalli and Rapuru and the electrified railway line between Venkatachalam and Obulavaripalli.
Besides inaugurating the re-modelled yard at Guduru railway station, the Vice-President also flagged-off a new inter-city superfast express train between Guduru and Vijayawada.
Naidu termed the 6.7-km-long tunnel an "engineering marvel" and said it would provide viable rail connectivity between the Krishnapatnam Port and the hinterland for seamless movement of freight.
The tunnel, built at a cost of Rs 437 crore, has 44 trolley refuges and 14 cross-passages in a horseshoe design. "I am overwhelmed with emotion as my long-cherished childhood dream has now come true," the Naidu remarked, recalling his trip on the newly-commissioned Obulavaripalli-Krishnapatnam line on Saturday.
"I am emotional because the railway line passes through my native and ancestral villages where I spent my childhood. At that time nobody had even imagined that a train would be passing these hillocks one day. When I was minister (in the erstwhile Vajpayee government) this line was envisaged, planned, surveyed and sanctioned. It is finally completed when I am the Vice-President now," Naidu recalled.
The Vice-President said his next priority would be to get the crucial Nadikudi-Srikalahasthi new railway line project completed expeditiously as it would ensure development of the upland regions of Andhra Pradesh. A South Central Railway release said on the occasion that the 112-km new line reduces travel time from 10 to five hours for a goods train from Krishnapatnam Port to Obulavaripalli.