Watch: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw shares glimpse of the new Pamban Bridge

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has shared an animated video of the new Pamban Bridge, which will soon connect Rameswaram, a Municipality in Tamil Nadu, with the rest of India. The 26-second clip shows how the state-of-the-art bridge and its vertical lift will function, once it is ready for operations.

The video was shared by the Railway Minister on Wednesday, and it has garnered over 1 million views on Twitter. The video shows the functioning of India’s first vertical lift railway sea bridge.

 

The 72-metre-long Vertical lift span can be lifted up to 17 metres to allow ships to pass under it. The vertical lift span will be built for a double track and the bridge will have 100 spans across the sea. Out of the total spans, 99 spans will be 18.3 metres long and one span with the vertical lift will be 72.5 metres.

Currently, about 84 percent of the work is completed and track laying is underway at the bridge. The fabrication of the vertical lift span girder is nearing completion as per information from the Ministry of Railways.

The new bridge is parallel to the existing well-known Pamban Bridge on the northern side of the Pamban Channel. The work for the bridge started in February 2020. The new bridge will be 3 metres taller than the existing bridge.

The new Pamban Bridge, developed by Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), is being built at a cost of Rs 279.63 crore. However, as per reports, the project ended up costing around Rs 540 crore.

Meanwhile, the Madurai Division of Southern Railway has announced that train operations have been suspended on the existing Pamban Bridge till December 31.

As per an ANI report, repair work was underway on the bridge since December 23. The Southern Railway authorities have announced that engineers will carry out the tests after the completion of the repair work and only then the trains will be allowed to cross the bridge.