USBRL: Across the Chenab to Kashmir

The trains flagged off between Katra and Srinagar on 6 June 2025 crossed more than a spectacular bridge. They used the final connection between the Kashmir Valley’s existing railway and the national network. Completion of the 272-kilometre Udhampur–Srinagar–Baramulla Rail Link, or USBRL, changed a railway within the Valley into a railway connected to the rest of India. [1]

Its most recognisable structure is the Chenab bridge: 1,315 metres long, with the railway 359 metres above the riverbed. The inauguration also included the cable-stayed Anji bridge. The government put the completed USBRL project’s cost at about ₹43,780 crore, covering the line and its many structures, rather than the Chenab crossing alone. [1]

A connection built in stages

The project long predates the government that completed it. The Comptroller and Auditor General recorded its sanction in 1994–95. The Qazigund–Baramulla section opened in stages between October 2008 and October 2009. By then, trains were carrying passengers within Kashmir even though the difficult southern connection remained unfinished. [2]

The Qazigund–Banihal section followed in June 2013, Udhampur–Katra in July 2014 and Banihal–Sangaldan in February 2024. These successive openings, documented in contemporaneous project reporting, explain why describing June 2025 as Kashmir’s first railway would erase much of the work. [3]

The delays were not attributed entirely to the mountains. In its 2012 audit, the CAG identified weak planning and inadequate geological investigation before construction as central problems. Uncertainty over the alignment led to suspended work, abandoned structures and contract disputes. Those were findings about an earlier phase of execution; completion does not erase them, and they do not constitute an audit of the finished line. [2]

More than the arch

The Chenab steel arch closed on 5 April 2021. Deck construction and track work still lay ahead. Northern Railway was the client, Konkan Railway the executing agency and an Ultra–Afcons–VSL joint venture the contractor. WSP and Leonhardt, Andrä and Partners supplied major design work, alongside contributions from Indian scientific and engineering institutions. The final crossing was the product of this wider effort. [4]

Much of the operational infrastructure is less visible. In August 2025, the railway ministry described ventilation for tunnels longer than two kilometres, escape tunnels for those exceeding three kilometres and firefighting equipment. Its environmental account also acknowledged that some villages’ natural water sources had been disrupted, with alternative supplies provided through pumping. Those safeguards and remedies remain part of the railway’s responsibilities after construction. [5]

Freight soon supplied another measure of the connection. According to the ministry, a train carrying 21 wagons of cement reached Anantnag from Punjab on 9 August 2025. In September, it announced a scheduled parcel service for apples between Badgam and Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar. [6]

A delivered cement consignment demonstrates a working route. An announced apple service creates a transport option; it does not yet establish an increase in growers’ incomes. Beyond the bridge photographs, the line’s everyday purpose rests in such journeys: passengers crossing the mountains and goods reaching a destination on the other side. [6]