Western railway will handover the whole of the metre gauge section of Khandwa railway station to Central Railway post gauge conversion of Khandwa MHOW section, sources said.
Western Railway is also in the process of building a chord line between Mathela on the Khandwa-Itarsi section and Ajanti on the Khandwa- MHOW section (which is under gauge conversion) to receive trains directly from the Itarsi side.
Once gauge conversion is completed, it would enable faster movement of freight and passenger trains between Jabalpur and Indore while eliminating direction reversal at Khandwa. Interestingly, Khandwa junction is situated at the cusp of 4 railway zones- Western Railway’s Ratlam Division, Central Railway’s Bhusaval division, West Central Railway’s Bhopal division and South Central Railway’s Nanded division.
It would be losing two of those zones post guage conversion. In addition to the WR handing over the KNW station to CR, the AK-KNW line would probably see a new alignment that wherein the line will join the CR mainline before Khandwa at Bagmar.