Effective Ways to get the most speed on of our railways

[FuturePAF]

Pakistan is finally in the midst of an infrastructure renaissance. A rebirth; which if the Dawn story on CPEC feasibility study conducted by the Chinese banks is to come through would mean modern agriculture, industry, and electricity generation on top of the road upgrades. All of these at huge costs, but with transformative potential. We should be looking at our railways in the same way. Our current rail network is barely more than what we inherited from the British 70 years ago! We are currently planning to double track and modernize the Peshawar Karachi Route, including the use of modern concrete rail sleepers (what the tracks sit on), and want to achieve speeds of 160 kmph and more. The Chinese rightly pointed out this would be hard to do, but the reason wasn't fully elaborated to the public. When the chinese, or anyone for that matter, build high speed lines, the goal is to make the track run as straight as possible. hence the extensive use of tracks on large pillars spanning the Chinese countryside. While a feasibility study would be needed to determine what kind of track elevations and bridges are needed, in order to have modern trains operating at 160 kmph for long periods of time, we would need to build new tracks where the route becomes extreme circuitous.

Here are two examples of what could be done to achieve this end. (The orange is the current track, and the blue the proposed new track, the added benefit is less habitation near the proposed track and therefore less risk of slowing down due to local populace interference)

p.s. I am Aware Attock would have to be skipped along the route, but a local train could run from Peshawar to Pindi on the Old track to link that city.

A couple of great documentaries to watch to gain a better understand how the British modernized their own railways; with lessons that can be used to improve Pakistan Railways