Global construction company Afcons Infrastructure has built the world’s highest single-arch railway bridge, situated in the treacherous Himalayan terrain. Towering 359 m above the river and 35 m higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the newly opened Chenab Railway Bridge connects the Kashmir Valley to the Indian subcontinent by rail for the first time.
This 1.3-km-long bridge is part of the Indian Government’s ambitious Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) project, which aims to connect Jammu and Kashmir to the rest of the country through an all-weather railway connectivity. The design life of the bridge is 120 years.
Engineering marvel
The Chenab Railway Bridge incorporates a number of unique features that set new benchmarks in bridge engineering, revealed Afcons. It is designed to withstand extreme wind speeds of up to 266 km/hr, making it resilient against harsh environmental conditions. In addition, it has been engineered to resist seismic forces of Zone-V, the highest-intensity earthquake zone in India.
Notably, it is also India’s first railway bridge designed to resist blast loads, underscoring a new level of safety and structural fortification. The bridge has been constructed with built-in redundancy; even if a pier or trestle were to be removed, it would remain operational at a restricted speed of 30 km/hr and would not collapse under its own weight.
To deliver this iconic project, Afcons deployed some of the world’s most advanced construction technologies and equipment. The erection of piers, trestles and the steel arch segments was carried out using the world’s largest-capacity crossbar cable cranes, custom-designed for the project. The pylon height of the cable crane at the Srinagar end stands at 127 m, which is significantly taller than Delhi’s Qutub Minar (72 m). These innovations made construction possible in a remote and geologically complex Himalayan region.
According to Afcons, the construction of the Chenab Railway Bridge also marked several engineering firsts in Indian Railways. For the first time, phased array ultrasonic testing (PAUT) technology was used for the inspection of welds. A National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL) accredited testing laboratory was established onsite – another first – to maintain stringent quality controls for weld testing during construction.
What’s more, the project saw the first-ever execution of incremental launching of a deck structure on combined circular and transition curves on Indian Railways, a feat of precision engineering rarely achieved anywhere in the world, said Afcons.
“For Afcons, it represents our unwavering commitment to nation-building and our ability to reimagine infrastructure in the toughest terrains,” remarked S Paramasivan, managing director of Afcons. “This bridge will inspire generations of engineers and stands as a tribute to the power of Indian engineering and teamwork.”
Image 2: Prime Minister’s Office (India)
