India, Bangladesh join trans-Asia railway project

Mumbai: A train journey to places like Singapore, Bangkok, Yangon, Tehran and even cities in Turkey may become a reality within the next few years, with India and Bangladesh joining the trans-Asian railway project.

Railway Board chairman J P Batra signed an agreement to this effect in New York.

The agreement was initiated major Asian states under the aegis of the United Nations. With Bangladesh and India entering the fold, the number of countries that have become signatories to the revival of the trans-Asian railway has risen to 20.

Earlier, 18 countries had already signed the agreement at Busan in South Korea in November 2006.

The southern corridor of the proposed Asian Rail Network will link China''s Kunming province, bordering Vietnam, with Kapikule in Bulgaria in the Euopean peninsula via a 11,460-km line.

The cities to be linked include Bangkok in Thailand and idyllic towns of Myanmar, Bangladesh, India , Iran and Turkey.

The long train corridor will be designed in such a manner that it will hook up with existing trunk routes of participating countries, giving travellers a wide choice of places to break their journey.

Officials of the participating countries will meet soon to work out the fare system and travel packaging, which could prove a boon to travellers.

The dream rail project, according to experts, will not take long to become operational as a good railway network already exists in major junctions like Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Thailand and China.

Work will start soon on "missing links" in Myanmar, remote areas of Thailand, China''s Yunnan province and India''s northeastern state of Mizoram, they said.

The Asian network will enter India through Tami in Kanpur, bordering Myanmar , and then make its way to Geed in Bangladesh. On the western side, the network will pass through the Wagga-Atari route on the Pakistan border.

Railway officials said one of the "missing links" was a stretch of 315 km between Kanpur and Myanmar, of which 180 km falls in Indian territory between Jeroboam and Tami.

The network, according to global experts, will not be a boon for tourists alone as it will also improve transport linkages between Asia and Europe and facilitate the movement of goods and containers among Saarc and Assen nations.

The multilateral agreement will harmonise different standards and technologies adopted by different countries.

The trans-Asian railways project of UN-ESCAPE aims to promote infrastructure development in the escape region. An inter-government agreement to formalise the network was negotiated under UN-ESCAPE and adopted by ESCAPE at its 62nd session in Jakarta in April 2006.