The Chenab Rail Bridge: An Engineering Marvel setting new Milestones

The Chenab bridge is part of the ambitious 272-km long railway line from Udhampur to Baramulla - named the ‘Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link Project’ - joining Jammu with the Kashmir valley as an all-weather high speed alternative.

The 272-km long railway line will have 38 tunnels - a total length of 119 km - with the country’s longest tunnel T-49 (12.75 km), and 927 big and small bridges (total length of 13 km) part of it. The place near the Chenab bridge often witnesses hostile weather conditions, and so a sophisticated automatic signalling system installed on both sides will stop the trains from crossing the bridge if wind speeds there touch 90 kph.

For the first time ever since independence, Srinagar will be linked to the rest of India after the overarch deck on the world’s highest single-arch railway bridge over Chenab River will be launched. The world’s highest railway bridge is now being built, and when it is finished, it will be 35 meters higher than the Eiffel Tower.

Afcons is building 16 additional railway bridges for Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) in the dangerous terrain of Jammu and Kashmir in addition to the Chenab Bridge. All the bridges are part of the Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project. Afcons recently finished the main deck slab concreting of a bridge that is even higher than the Qutub Minar as part of the 16 KRCL bridges project. In under 70 days, four levels of concreting totalling over 1,550 cum were completed. The entire event took place in Jammu and Kashmir’s steep Sangaldan at a height of more than 90 meters above the surrounding countryside.

Construction

The Chenab Rail Bridge was originally intended to be completed in December 2009. However, in September 2008, the project was halted due to fears over the bridge’s stability and safety. Work on the bridge restarted in 2010, with the plan to complete it in 2015.