Banihal railway station (station code: BAHL), a part of

Jammu–Baramulla line The Jammu–Baramulla line is a railway track being laid to connect the Kashmir Valley in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir with Jammu railway station and thence to the rest of the country. The 356 km railway track will star ...

, is situated in notified area of Banihal in

Ramban district Ramban district is a district in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, located in the lap of the Pir Panjal range. It was carved out as a separate district from erstwhile Doda district in 2007. It is located in the Jammu division. Th ...

, Jammu and Kashmir. It was commissioned on 26 June 2013 and passenger trains run from Banihal to

Qazigund Qazigund, also known as Gateway Of Kashmir, is a town and in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, India. Qazigund is located at . It has an average elevation of 1670 m (5478 feet) above mean sea level. Qazigund Bypass Passes Th ...

. The station was inaugurated by former prime minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on the same day at 2.22 pm. They enjoyed the 12-minute ride in train through Pir Panjal tunnel up to Qazigund with 100 students, mostly girls, of the Banihal Higher Secondary School, and made the 17.8-km ride back to Banihal, passing through the tunnel again, the second longest in Asia.

Background

The station has been built as part of the

megaproject, intending to link the Kashmir Valley with

Jammu Tawi Jammu Tawi (station code: JAT) is a railway station in Jammu city in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Background Jammu Tawi is the largest railway station in Jammu and Kashmir. It is a major railhead for other places in the r ...

and the rest of the Indian railway network.

Services

The railway network in Kashmir from Banihal to

Baramulla Baramulla (), also known as Varmul () in Kashmiri, is a town and a municipality in the Baramulla district in the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. It is also the administrative headquarters of the Baramulla district. It is on the ...

is now 137 km. Five trains run daily from Banihal to Baramulla. The services were paused for a prolonged period since 5 August 2019 after the

Abrogation of Article 35A On 5 August 2019, the Parliament of India voted in favour of a resolution tabled by Home Minister Amit Shah to revoke the temporary special status, or autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir—a region ...

and at that period it were resumed only once for a special documentary shoot. However later the services were introduced from January 2020 onwards.

Design

The RL of the station is above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

. Like all the other stations in this megaproject, this station also features Kashmiri wood architecture, with an intended ambience of a royal court which is designed to complement the local surroundings to the station. Station signage is predominantly in

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Hindi Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

References

{{Railway stations in Jammu and Kashmir Railway stations in Ramban district Railway stations opened in 2013 Firozpur railway division

Background

Services

Design

See also

References