To connect Mizoram's capital Aizawl to the railway network, the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) sourced construction material and labour force from across the country.
The 52-km Bairabi-Sairang (near Aizawl) rail line, built at a cost of approximately Rs 8,000 crore, is ready and will soon be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Vinod Kumar, chief engineer of the project, said his team ordered almost all construction material from other states.
"Crushed stones were brought from Assam, West Bengal and Jharkhand. We purchased sand from Silchar and Guwahati. We sourced reinforcement rods from Kolkata and bent them near the highway as carrying them to the construction site was not possible due to their length. Then, we straightened them for use at the site," he said.
"Small vehicles cannot carry 12-ft-long rods and big vehicles cannot ply on these roads," he added.
According to Kumar, steel girders used for the project were manufactured in Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Kolkata in West Bengal, and Wardha and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra.
NFR officials said that carrying girders to the construction site posed a huge logistical challenge and several special arrangements had to be made.
"There are two approach roads to Guwahati from Aizawl and both often get closed due to landslides or poor conditions. So, we carried the girders up to Bairabi using the rail network and then took them to the site by making special transportation arrangements," Kumar elaborated.
"Cranes were dismantled to take them to the site to place these girders on the bridge. A day's work took more than a month to complete due to all these reasons," he said.
Both skilled and unskilled labourers who worked on the project were from West Bengal, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand, he added.
According to the officials, with the completion of the Bairabi-Sairang line, Mizoram will be the fourth northeastern state to have its capital city linked to the national railway network.
According to the NFR, the line has 48 tunnels covering a distance of 12.853 km, 55 major and 87 minor bridges, five road overbridges and nine road underbridges. One of the bridges, numbered 196, stands 104 metres tall -- 42 metres taller than the Qutub Minar.
The railway line was commissioned in four phases -- Bairabi-Hortoki (16.72 km) commissioned in July 2024, Hortoki-Kawnpui (9.71 km), Kawnpui-Mualkhang (12.11 km), and Mualkhang-Sairang (12.84 km), all three commissioned in June this year.