The Barsoi–Radhikapur branch line links

Barsoi railway station Barsoi Junction railway station serves Barsoi city in Katihar district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is a major and very important railway station having stoppages of premium trains like Howrah–New Jalpaiguri Vande Bharat Express and New J ...

on the

Howrah–New Jalpaiguri line The Howrah–New Jalpaiguri line is a railway line connecting with in North Bengal in the Indian state of West Bengal. The line continues through North Bengal and western part of Assam to connect with Guwahati. The – link allows trains from ...

to Radhikapur railway station on the

Bangladesh–India border The Bangladesh–India border, known locally as the International Border (IB), is an international border running between Bangladesh and India that demarcates the eight divisions of Bangladesh and the Indian states. Bangladesh and India share ...

History

Assam Behar State Railway extended the metre-gauge railway from , now in Bangladesh, to in 1889. With the

partition of India The Partition of British India in 1947 was the Partition (politics), change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: ...

in 1947, the Katihar–Radhikapur section remained in India and the Biral–Parbatipur section was placed in Pakistan (later Bangladesh).

The railway line

When the broad-gauge railway line, instead of being placed at Dalkhola–Malda via Raiganj, was moved to Dalkhola–Barsoi–Malda this section, became only a branch line. This branch line starts at Barsoi railway station and ends at Radhikapur railway station where the Indo-Bangladesh border lies. The Barsoi–Radhikapur sector was converted to broad gauge in 2006. The corresponding station on the Bangladesh side is in Dinajpur District. The transit facility in the Radhikapur–Birol sector has remained suspended since 1 April 2005.But now it has been converted to broad gauge and large goods train are travelling with stone boulders from Nepal to Bangladesh through India from March 2017 and it was officially operationalised and announced open in April 2017.Tiral run flagged off by Modi and hasina, Economic Times, 6 April 2017
/ref> The railway track on the Indian side has been converted to

broad gauge A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union (CIS ...

while that on the Bangladesh side remains

metre gauge Metre-gauge railways are narrow-gauge railways with track gauge of or 1 metre. The metre gauge is used in around of tracks around the world. It was used by European colonial powers, such as the French, British and German Empires. In Europe, la ...

. There are 13 railway stations in this branch line. 10 of them are in Uttar Dinajpur district of

West Bengal West Bengal (, Bengali: ''Poshchim Bongo'', , abbr. WB) is a state in the eastern portion of India. It is situated along the Bay of Bengal, along with a population of over 91 million inhabitants within an area of . West Bengal is the fourt ...

and the rest are in Katihar district of

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Be ...

Stations

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barsoi-Radhikapur branch line Railway stations in India opened in 1889 Katihar railway division Bangladesh–India border crossings Railway stations in Uttar Dinajpur district Railway lines opened in 1889