Tamil Nadu: Railways To Complete India¡¯s First Vertical Lift Sea Bridge By March 2022
The bridge will allow the Indian Railways to operate trains at a higher speed with more weight. It will also increase traffic between the mainland of Pamban and Rameswaram.
Indian Railways began the construction work on the new 2.05 km Pamban railway bridge in Mandapam. This will connect Rameswaram to the mainland in Pamban in Tamil Nadu and will be operational from March next year.
This dual-track state-of-the-art bridge is all set to become India's first Vertical Lift Railway Sea Bridge.
The new bridge will help the railways to operate trains at higher speeds, carry more weight and increase the volume of traffic between Pamban and Rameswaram.
Earlier, the Ministry of Railways also shared some pictures of the new Pamban bridge via a Twitter post. Calling it an engineering marvel, the ministry said, ¡°This dual-track state-of-the-art bridge will be the country's first vertical lift railway sea bridge and is expected to be completed by March 2022.¡±
New Pamban Bridge: An engineering marvel !
¡ª Ministry of Railways (@RailMinIndia) October 3, 2021
This dual-track state-of-the-art bridge will be the country's first Vertical Lift Railway Sea Bridge and is expected to be completed by March 2022. pic.twitter.com/BaFVxAVkCM
The Minister Of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw also shared pictures of the same.
The sea bridge is being developed by Railway Vikas Nigam (RVNL) at the cost of Rs 250 crores. The foundation stone for the project was laid by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in March 2019 at Kanyakumari. The bridge will allow the Indian Railways to operate trains at a higher speed with more weight. It will also increase traffic between the mainland of Pamban and Rameswaram.
It will have 100 spans of 18.3 meters and one navigational span of 63 meters. It will be three-metre higher than the existing bridge with navigational air clearance of 22 metres above sea level. Because of the vertical lift, the full horizontal width of 63m will be available for navigation. The substructure of the bridge will be built for a double line and the navigational span will also have provision for the double line.
Twitter
The entire bridge including navigational span will be designed keeping in mind the railways' plan of electrification.
The existing Pamban Rail Bridge, which connects Rameswaram to mainland India, is 105 years old. The original bridge was built in 1914 to connect Mandapam to the Rameswaram island situated in the Gulf of Mannar. It was the only link connecting the two locations until a new road bridge was built parallel to the sea link in 1988.
Ever seen a moving bridge? The Pamban Sea-Bridge that connects Rameshwaram with mainland India will soon have vertical lift span technology to allow the cross-navigation of vessels pic.twitter.com/Z2W8vruokG
¡ª Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) December 28, 2018
However, the 105-year-old bridge is not suitable to speed up-gradation and the Railways Minister has decided to build a new bridge that will have a vertical shaft to allow for ferries to pass under when trains are not operating.
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