Commissioner of Railway Safety to conduct a two-day inspection at new Pamban bridge
The new vertical lift girder span bridge would replace the old cantilever rail bridge, which was first built and opened in February 1914.
New Pamban bridge (Credits: @x.com/RailMinIndia)
CHENNAI: The much-anticipated opening of the Pamban sea bridge would move one step closer to reopening traffic the sea bridge in a couple of days. The Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) would conduct the statutory two-day high-speed statutory inspection of the bridge connecting Pamban and Mandapam section on November 13 and 14, a notification issued by Southern Railway (SR) said.
The CRS would conduct a high-speed trial run using a special train formation between Pamban and Mandapam Railway sections between 8am and 3pm on the new Pamban Bridge (reconstruction of bridge no 346) including a new broad gauge track (single line) between Mandapam and Pamban halt stations. The CRS would also inspect the functioning, locking and centering arrangements of the vertical lift girder span on the new Pamban bridge, construction of which was undertaken by RVNL (Rail Vikas Nigam Limited), the engineering division of Indian Railways, on behalf of railways at a cost of Rs 535 crore.
The new vertical lift girder span bridge would replace the old cantilever rail bridge, which was first built and opened in February 1914. The sole link between Mandapam and Rameswaram till a parallel road bridge was built in 1988, train services on the old bridge were suspended in December 2022 due to severe corrosion that damaged the double-leaf section. Train movement on the old bridge was suspended following detection of excessive vibration during train movement in 2022 when a team of IIT Madras experts fitted monitoring equipment. The old bridge, which withstood the infamous 1964 cyclonic storm that wreaked havoc in the region, even killing many in Dhanushkodi, underwent renovation in record 45-days after the cyclone. The new vertical lift girder span bridge, which would be three meters higher than the old manually operated double leaf bascule section bridge, would provide 22 meters of air clearance above sea level, against the 19 meters of the old bridge. The new bridge consists of 100 spans, each measuring 18.3meters, with a single 63-meter navigation span.