World’s highest arch on rail bridge completed in India on Chenab

SRINAGAR: Indian engineers on Monday, April 5, completed the arch of the world’s highest railway bridge on Chenab river in Jammu and Kashmir, which has been built at a height 35 metres higher than the Eiffel Tower in France.

The iconic Chenab Bridge is being constructed by the Indian Railways as a part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link (USBRL) project. The bridge will be 1315 metres long, which will soar 359 metres above the river bed. The bridge is being built to provide much-needed all-weather connectivity between Kashmir and the rest of the county. The bridge has been designed to withstand earthquakes, with a magnitude of up to eight on the Richter scale, and high-intensity blasts.

According to railway officials, building the arch for the bridge was the most challenging task the railways had ever undertaken and it was the most crucial portion of the USBRL, whose construction had started in 2004 but the work kept getting delayed. Ashutosh Gangal, general manager of Northern Railways, said that presently, it takes 12 hours to travel between Katra and Banihal, but the link will enable passengers to travel the same distance in half the time. He said that the bridge is likely to be completed in a year and the entire rail link is expected to be completed in two and a half years.