Erection of steel girders, claimed to be the longest in Southern States for constructing road over bridge (ROB), was completed at Samayanallur near here on Wednesday.
The erection of five girders, measuring 51 metres each, has only raised the hopes the Madurai-Dindigul four-way road to get the second ROB on the highway soon, for which the road users had been waiting for more than three years.
Vehicles can ply on the new ROB by May-end, the Director (Projects) Indian Railway Construction Company, Deepak Sabhlok, said. The lack of ROB on one half of the four-way road has created a bottleneck for vehicular traffic on the highway at Samayanallur where Madurai-Samayanallur two-way road meets the Madurai-Dindigul four-way.
Large number of officials witnesses it
A large number of Southern Railway officials, led by its General Manager, Deepak Krishan, witnessed the whole processing of lifting of the fifth girder, weighing 80 tonnes, with the help of two huge cranes for nearly three hours.
A total of five girders, two weighing 80 tonnes each, and three weighing 40 tonnes each, have been put in place over the railway line on the Madurai-Dindigul section.
The Divisional Railway Manager, A.K. Goel, and Additional Divisional Railway Manager, Ajith Kumar, were among those officials who were present.
IRCON, the principal contractor of the ROB construction work, could not complete the work earlier as the specially-fabricated girders were damaged in transit when brought from Chandigarh. The girders had to be replaced as per instruction of Southern Railway.
“We had used the longest steel girders, measuring 56 metres, for ROB in Pathankot (Jammu and Kashmir). This (51 metres) steel girder is the longest one we have used in southern States,” Mr. Sabhlok said.
IRCON had to use the steel girders instead of the conventional concrete structure for the ROB because of lack of adequate space to put up load-bearing piers in the middle of railway tracks. Steel girders were costlier, but helped completion of the work with minimum disruption of railway traffic.
“Here the structures are made in ground and just fixed over railway line in few hours, whereas the concrete structure has to be built with a lot of strutting work. The construction work has to be carried out with utmost safety measures with the operation of trains,” Mr. Sabhlok said.
