Guntur railway division

Guntur Railway Division is one of the six divisions of the South Central Railway zone of Indian Railways. It was created in 1997 for better administration in the respective railway zone and became fully functional on 1 April 2003 with P.N Shukla as its first divisional manager. The headquarters of the Guntur division are located at Rail Vikas Bhavan in Guntur.HistoryThe Krishna Canal-Nandyal (KCC-NDL) stretch was a part of the important East-West coast link that connected Margao in Goa to Masulipatnam in the erstwhile Madras Province of British India. It was originally built to Metre Gauge by the Southern Mahratta Railway (later the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway-MSMR) during 1889–90. The track passed through the Nallamala Hills and as a result quite a few major engineering works were undertaken in the course of the railroad construction, the most impressive of them being the massive Dorabavi Viaduct and the Bogada Tunnel, both of them about 30 km from Nandyal. This section was converted to Broad Gauge during 1993–95. The gauge conversion was a difficult task owing to the difficult terrain. The old alignment between Gazulapalli and Diguvametta was abandoned and a new Bogada tunnel, about 1.6 km in length and a new Dorabavi Viaduct located at a much lower altitude were constructed at a huge expense. The railway passes through the historic Cumbum Tank starting from Cumbum railway station for a distance of about 7 km. It is one of the most picturesque valleys in Guntur-Nandyal section of South Central Railway.