‘An engineering marvel’: World’s highest railway bridge in J&K to be ready by September

World’s highest railway bridge on Chenab River will be ready by September this year.

“In September this year, the highest rail bridge on Chenab river will be ready and Kashmir will be connected with Kanyakumari…the pace of development has doubled in the region since August 2019,” said Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha.

Chenab Bridge is the highest railway bridge in the world. It is 1.315 km long and has a maximum arch span of 480m. More than 29,000 MT of steel is being used in the construction of this bridge. Two cable cranes of 20 MT capacity each have been used for structural components in the valley,” said an official  

Built at the height of 359 meters from the river bed level, the bridge will surpass the world’s current tallest railway bridge (275 meters) over the Beipanjiang River in China’s Guizhou province.

Constructed at the cost of Rs 1327 crore near the Salal Hydro Power Dam, the Chenab Bridge is part of the second leg of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link.

Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Line (USBRL) is a national project that will connect Kashmir valley with the rest of the country through an all-weather railway network. The total length of the USBRL is 272 km. Of which 161 km has already been commissioned, while work is in progress on the 111-km-long Katra-Banihal stretch. The Katra-Banihal section comprises 27 main tunnels and 8 escape tunnels and 87% out of 111Km of the section is covered in tunnels.

Maharaja Pratap Singh had dreamed of this project in 1898. A project was sanctioned in 1905 but it could not be implemented so far.  After independence, Jammu got connected with the rest of India through rail. Indira Gandhi started work on the difficult Chenab section (which includes Kashmir) in 1983

An engineering marvel, the Chenab bridge is expected to be 35 meters taller than the Eiffel Tower of France. It will withstand a wind velocity of 220 kilometers per hour at the deck level.

The bridge is being built in the seismic zone V. The slope along the Katra side back is 35-50 degrees while the Qazigund sidebank is vertical to sub-vertical.  Indian railways had sought the help of experts from different countries in building the world’s highest railway bridge