Stuck for 9 months, hi-tech turbine set to move

India's most hi-tech power turbine is finally expected to be liberated from a narrow hill road between Mumbai and Nashik on Tuesday...

India’s most hi-tech power turbine is finally expected to be liberated from a narrow hill road between Mumbai and Nashik on Tuesday, almost nine months after it got embarrassingly stuck on its way to Chhattisgarh as the National Highway here was not strong or wide enough to take the load. The gigantic task is due to begin at 4 am on Tuesday and is expected to test the nerves of officials and workers with the highway closed to heavy vehicles for at least 12 hours.

Smaller automobiles will be diverted through another route, said Shrikant Jawale, Nashik’s traffic Dy SP. “Adequate arrangements have been made wherever we thought the trailer could get stuck and the sides and corners of the ghat have been cut well.

We don’t expect any problems, certainly not after it completes the climb,” said Jawale.

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At least 100 people are expected to be involved in the job to move the 200-wheel trailer which carried about 70 per cent of the turbine components, including the heaviest part — the 370 tonne stator — he said.

The turbine is meant for the first unit of the National Thermal Power Corporation’s 1980 MW power plant in Sipat in Bilaspur district. It was imported from Power Machines of Russia and arrived at the Mumbai port early last year. The NTPC officials said it got stuck in Kasara Ghat as National Highway authorities had not upgraded the road even though they had surveyed it for the load more than a year prior to the incident.

Besides its colossal weight, the size of the turbine is an issue too. Such a turbine is estimated to be at least 32 feet long, 14 feet high and 13 feet wide. This required an upgrade that involved shearing the rock faces on sections along the highway and strengthening bridges, reinforcing culverts along NH 3 which goes from Mumbai to Agra.

The successful removal of the mechanical monster would come as a huge relief not only to the traffic on the busy highway but also to two men who have been guarding it and living with it for more than five months now. Santosh Kumar and Nagesh Kumar Mishra said they had given up on the turbine being moved when The Indian Express visited them last week.

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“For the last five months, they have been telling us that it will happen today or tomorrow. But nothing has happened at all,” Kumar said. Mishra said they were “sitting around doing nothing” in the middle of a jungle, adding that it was six days since he had a wash as there was no water around. “We look dirty and people think we are mad men whenever we do to the dhaba to eat,” added Kumar. One morning last week, they had been told that the trailer would begin moving out at 6 am. But no one turned up, the two men said. This time, they hope, it’s not another false start.