In Pictures

In Pictures: Sri Lanka opens Tamil rail ties

Northern rail line, which will connect Jaffna to capital Colombo, reopens nearly 24 years after civil war shut it down.

India has helped provide the state of the art tracks and bridges that can accommodate train speeds of up to 120km. The old wooden sleepers on Northern Railway line are being replaced with concrete sleepers to allow for high speed travel.

13 Oct 2014

Sri Lanka will reopen its northern rail line that will connect the city of Jaffna to the capital, Colombo, nearly a quarter of century after a bloody civil war shut it down.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa will formally inaugurate the rail services along the 358km route on Monday.

The “Queen of Jaffna”, a once-popular train linking the Tamil-majority north to the rest of the island nation, stopped its operation in 1990, after it came under attack by the Tamil rebels who wanted a separate homeland for the minority community.

The railway tracks and Jaffna station were damaged during the war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the government forces.

With an $800m loan from India, the Sri Lankan government began rebuilding nearly two years after the conflict ended in 2009.

More than a million Tamils living in Jaffna, which was first connected to the rest of the Sinhalese-majority island through a rail link in 1905 under British colonial rule, hope to get reconnected to the rest of the country.

Sri Lankan Deputy Minister of Transport Rohana Dissanayake welcomed the opening of the railway line. “The people of the north and south are once again reconnected after years of civil war,” he said.

Residents of Jaffna have greeted the news of the opening with cautious optimism, saying that after two decades family members who fled the fighting will be able to return to see relatives who stayed behind.

Operations along the 358km route will be monitored from the newly built Jaffna railway station with new technology. Station workers will undergo training that will provide them with the expertise to operate the new systems.

Members of both the LTTE and the army used the train tracks and abandoned railway coaches as bunkers.

The Jaffna station and the northern line were damaged during the war between the LTTE and government forces.

More than a million Tamils living in Jaffna hope to get reconnected to the rest of the Sinhala-majority country.

It took nearly four years and an investment of $150m from the Sri Lankan government to rebuild the tracks and Jaffna station.

Local residents were employed in the reconstruction of Jaffna station. The training they received from the Indians during the project has given them an expertise which they say will provide greater job opportunities in the future.

Restoration work under way at Jaffna railway station.

Reconstruction work has been made possible through the financial and technical assistance provided by the Indian government and a subsidiary company of Indian railway, IRCON.

The renovated Jaffna railway station which was damaged during the civil war.

The history of the Northern Railway line dates back over 120 years. The Sri Lankan government hopes to keep the tradition alive with replica instruments on display in the station master(***)s office.

The Sri Lankan government hopes that the reopening of the rail link will help alleviate shortages of supply in the north, which was cut off during the war.

For many of the older generation from Jaffna, travelling on the iconic Yaal Devi or the (***)Queen of Jaffna(***) has not been possible for the past 24 years. They look forward to the resumption of the rail services.

Many of the trains running on the route are those which were operating prior to its closure. The Indian railway company, IRCON, has offered the Sri Lankan government several new high-speed trains.

Viresh Loknath worked as a ticket counter operator at the Jaffna train station prior to its closure in 1990. He welcomes the reopening of the line, stating that once more the country has been reconnected.