Work on ECRL’s first track to start by year’s end

KUANTAN – The installation of the first track of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project – involving the route from Gebeng here to Dungun, Terengganu – is scheduled to start at the end of this year.

Khairi Khalid Abdul Rahman, the regional construction manager for Pahang at Malaysia Rail Link Sdn Bhd – the entity in charge of the project – said this involves a 90-km route and is expected to be completed three to four months before the installation work continues from Gebeng to Maran.

“We hope to lay 1.5km of track per day for the Gebeng to Dungun route. The installation work starts in Gebeng because the equipment used, including track-laying machines from China, are coming here in line with the project planning.

“All these equipment will arrive at Kuantan Port between October or November, to enable the installation of the track to begin in Pahang,” he said when met at ECRL’s Aidilfitri open house here today.

Also present was Pahang Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Wan Rosdy Wan Ismail who also presented duit raya to 30 orphans from Permata Al Kauthar Muqarrabin.

Khairi Khalid said out of the total 665km of ECRL alignment, 231km are located in Pahang involving about 152km of level track while the rest are over bridges and through tunnels.

As for the work on bridges, Khairi Khalid said the installation of viaduct beams is progressing well with about 5km of the bridge route in Pahang done so far.

“There are two beam installation machines called beam launchers, namely in Kuantan for Sg Kuantan and in Temerloh for work on Sg Pahang, and we expect the bridge to be completed by the end of this year or early 2024,” he said.

As for the Genting Twin Tunnel, which crosses the Titiwangsa Range and will be the longest rail tunnel in Southeast Asia when completed, Khairi Khalid said that so far more than 2.5km has been excavated for each tunnel.

The excavation – using a tunnel boring machine as opposed to drilling and blasting methods in other tunnels – started last June and is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2025. – Bernama, May 17, 2023