Barsoi–Radhikapur branch line

Assam Behar State Railway extended the metre-gauge railway from Parbatipur, now in Bangladesh, to Katihar in 1889.^[2] With the partition of India in 1947, the Katihar–Radhikapur section remained in India and the Biral–Parbatipur section was placed in Pakistan (later Bangladesh).

When the broad-gauge railway line, instead of being placed at Dalkhola–Malda via Raiganj, was moved to Dalkhola–Barsoi–Malda this section, became only a branch line.^[3] This branch line starts at Barsoi railway station and ends at Radhikapur railway station where the Indo-Bangladesh border lies. The Barsoi–Radhikapur sector was converted to broad gauge in 2006.^[4] The corresponding station on the Bangladesh side is Biral in Dinajpur District.^[5][6] The transit facility in the Radhikapur–Birol sector has remained suspended since 1 April 2005.But now it has been converted to broad gauge and large goods train are travelling with stone boulders from Nepal to Bangladesh through India from March 2017 and it was officially operationalised and announced open in April 2017.^[7] The railway track on the Indian side has been converted to 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm) broad gauge while that on the Bangladesh side has been made into Dual gauge.^[8][9]

There are 10 railway stations in this branch line. 7 of them are in Uttar Dinajpur district of West Bengal and the rest are in Katihar district of Bihar.^[10]

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