Railways translocates heritage building for laying track

The railways has successfully translocated Tipu Sultan's armoury building, a heritage property, to a nearby location for laying track near Mysore, a first such exercise in the country.
Constructed during Tipu Sultan's era (1782-1799) to store ammunition, the armoury building was located right in the way of proposed alignment of double track between Bengaluru and Mysore.
"We shifted the entire heritage building in a pyramid shape to 40 metres away from its location safely without causing any damage to the protected property," said a senior Railway Ministry official.
Railways carried out the massive exercise of translocating an entire monument at Srirangapatanam to a nearby rail land with the help of US expertise at an estimated cost of Rs 13 crore.

Though the construction work of doubling the line between Mysore and Bangalore had started since 2013, the alignment could not be completed due to the heritage building which was coming in the way.
"Since this kind of unique work, executed for the first time in the country, no agency was readily available and the methodology for the shifting is also not known," said the official, adding "the job was executed with the help of experts from USA."
For lifting and moving the building, total 37 jacks were pressed into service. All these jacks were connected with the unifying jacking system for simultaneous and synchronised operation to prevent any unequal lifting and damages to the structure.

The armoury building is a typical single-storey masonry structure with arch roofing system.