New Cooch Behar Junction railway station


New Cooch Behar is a junction station on the Barauni-Guwahati Line of Northeast Frontier Railway. It serves Cooch Behar city in Cooch Behar district in the Indian state of West Bengal.

History

Cooch Behar had its first railway when Cooch Behar State Railway constructed the narrow gauge Geetaldaha-Jainti line in 1901. It was subsequently on the metre gauge Alipurduar-Bamanhat-Golokganj line. When Assam Link Project constructed the link through North Bengal, it used the longer New Jalpaiguri-Alipurduar-Samuktala Road Line.
New Cooch Behar station came up when the broad gauge New Jalpaiguri-New Bongaigaon section of Barauni-Guwahati Line was laid in 1966.

New Cooch Behar-Golokganj

Before partition there was a railway link from to via and. Some part of this route passed through Bangladesh, between and Golokganj. There were two stations Pateswari and Sonahat which were in Bangladesh, these functioned even after partition. However, the collapse of the rail-cum-road bridge over the Gadadhar in the seventies ended that link. Now the bridge has been rebuilt and a new broad gauge track has been laid, under New Maynaguri-Jogighopa Rail Project, via Tufangunj and Boxirhat, entirely through Indian territory. Dhubri-New Jalpaiguri Inter-city Express via Cooch Behar was introduced in February 2012. A new railway link from New Cooch Behar to New Jalpaiguri via Mathabhanga opened shortly.