The part of NH55 that gave way into the gorge. Picture Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, June 16: A part of Hill Cart Road caved in near Paglajhora this morning with 20 metres of the national highway that connects Siliguri to Darjeeling slipping into a 400-foot-deep gorge with a truckload of LPG cylinders and damaging the toy train tracks.

The driver and his helper, however, managed to jump out of the vehicle when the stretch of NH55 between Tindharia and Kurseong started sinking around 6am, possibly because of heavy rain last night. A few cylinders were removed in a hurry but the rest fell into the gorge with the truck.

The road to Lachung in North Sikkim was also shut down this afternoon because of a landslide at Pegong, 80km from Gangtok.

Officials of the National Highway division-IX of the state PWD who visited the cave-in spot on Hill Cart Road, 35km from Siliguri, said it would not be possible to say how long it would take to restore the road. “About 20 metres of the road have completely collapsed. We cannot say how much time it would take to restore the road,” said Dhruba Chakraborty, the superintendent engineer of the division.

Heavy vehicles have been diverted through Mirik and Mungpoo. “They will take about two extra hours to reach Darjeeling from Siliguri (it usually takes three hours). Light vehicles are plying through Pankhabari and Rohini. The time taken will be almost the same as through NH55,” said Bhaskar Moktan, the block development officer of Kurseong.

This is the second major landslide in a week on the highways in north Bengal.

On June 11, a landslide occurred near Hatisuray on NH31A and affected traffic for more than 48 hours.

Nirmal Mondal, executive engineer of the NH-IX division, said the Paglajhora area on Hill Cart Road — a 78km stretch from Darjeeling More in Siliguri to Chowk Bazar — had been already identified as a “sinking zone.”

“The surface of this vulnerable stretch collapsed after heavy rainfall last night. The restoration will have to start from about 35-40 metres below the elevation of the road. This will naturally, take time,” he said.

Partha Pratim Roy, the director of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, said the road would have to be built first for the tracks to be repaired.