Watch | India gets its first 'cable-stayed rail bridge' with 96 cables
India's Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Saturday posted a timelapse video of the making of the country's first cable-stayed rail bridge called “Anji Khad bridge”, which is now been completed.
The cable-stayed rail bridge has 96 cables and the cable strands' total length is 653 km.
Sharing the timelapse video, Vaishnaw wrote a caption which read, "In 11 months, India's first cable-stayed rail bridge is ready. All 96 cables are set! #AnjiKhadBridge PS: Total length of cable strands 653 km.”
In the video, the placement of every single cable from the first to the last can be seen.
The bridge has been built in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir's Reasi district under Indian Railways' most challenging Udampur-Srinagar-Baramulla-Rail Link (USBRL) Project.
The bridge is at a distance of 80 kilometres by road from Jammu. Reacting to the post, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “Excellent”.
Anji Khad Bridge is the "first cable-stayed bridge" of the country which will connect Katra and Reasi in the state of Jammu and Kashmir through Indian Railways.
The bridge was built as part of the national project “Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) Project”.
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and IIT Roorkee carried out detailed site-specific investigations to understand the daunting, fragile and complex geological features of the mountains in the forms of folds, faults and thrusts as well as studied the region's seismic proneness.
The mountain's slopes, which support one foundation of the main span, were stabilised by creating the special hybrid foundation on the Katra end because of space constraints.
The main parts of the construction of the bridge, which includes the main pylon which has a 40-metre-deep hybrid foundation, ancillary viaduct, and the central embankment, were carried out on the Srinagar end.
The bridge's total length is 725.5 metres. Anji Khad Bridge will be connecting tunnels T2 and T3 on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link project's Katra-Banihal Section.
The Anji Khad Bridge hangs by the support of 96 cables and the cable lengths range from 82 m to 295 m. The bridge has been designed in a way that it can handle heavy storms amid strong winds. The design wind speed mentioned by the engineers is 213 kmph.
A single railway line and a service road of 3.75 m-wide will be carried by the bridge and a footpath, which is 1.5m wide, will be on each side of the deck with a total width of 15 m.
