The Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link runs 272 km and was built at a cost of roughly Rs 43,780 crore to give the Kashmir Valley all-weather rail connectivity to the national network. It carries 36 tunnels totalling about 119 km and 943 bridges, and was dedicated to the nation by the Prime Minister on 6 June 2025. The Katra-Banihal stretch is the hardest 111 km of it: 33 tunnels cover 87 per cent of the route, and the alignment crosses two structures that define the project - the Chenab Rail Bridge and the Anji Khad Bridge. Raising the permissible speed from the earlier 75 and 85 kmph limits to a uniform 100 kmph is the operational consequence of the line settling in, and follows the prescribed safety and infrastructural audits.

A speed sanction is not a cosmetic upgrade. Maximum permissible speed on an Indian Railways section is set after the track structure, curvature, signalling, rolling stock and the bridges themselves have been assessed together, and it is raised only when the whole system supports it. Moving the Katra-Banihal section from two different limits, 85 and 75 kmph, to a uniform 100 kmph shortens journey times to the Valley and removes the drag of a slower segment on the whole run. For a line built through 33 tunnels and across the world's highest railway bridge, the sanction is also a statement that the structures are performing as designed under service conditions.