104-year-old Kalyan bridge demolished in five hours

sajana.nambiar@hindustantimes.com

The central railway (CR) on Sunday dismantled the 104-year-old Patripool Bridge in Kalyan in five hours, taking an hour less than the expected time. The previous demolition – Hancock Bridge near Sandhurst Road station in 2016 – took 18 hours.

Motorists from Kalyan use the bridge, which is on the 21-km Kalyan-Shilphata stretch, to reach Dombivli, Thane, Bhiwandi and Navi Mumbai. CR started shutting the old bridge after a report from the Indian Institute of Technology (Bombay) termed it unsafe. The adjacent bridge now handles the traffic.

The authorities had announced a six-hour power and traffic block at Kalyan railway station from 9.30am to 3.30pm for the demolition work. As the work got over by 2.30pm, the services resumed at 2.35pm. The first train in the up direction, Mumbai-Varanasi Mahanagari Express, left Kalyan at 2.40pm and a local train left Dombivli for Kalyan at 2.57pm. The services resumed fully by 3pm.

The road surface of the bridge was dismantled earlier without any block, leaving only two 27-m-long girders weighing 60 tonne each. A team of 250-300 people, including 50 engineers, 200 workers and RPF personnel, were on the job. Around 8am, the workers started to clear the overheard wires and other technical works, getting two cranes ready to lift the girders. Two cranes with a capacity of 120 tonnes were on standby. The lifting of the girder to the west of the bridge began at 11am, but was halted. The authorities then decided to lift the girder to the east. The work was completed by 11.57am. “We had to halt the work midway as the sling connected to the crane could not be stretched. The sling which had a capacity of 60 tonnes was replaced with a 90-tonne capacity one within seconds,” said SK Tiwari, chief administrative officer construction, CR.

The girder to the west was lifted around 11.51am. The entire operation was possible using a single crane, but two cranes were used to finish the work quickly. “We did not want to stretch the block and inconvenience commuters,” said Rajeev Mishra, chief engineer construction, CR. “With 72 hours of advanced planning and calculations, we managed to complete the dismantling work before time. This is a record. It shows CR is getting better at handling such operations,” said Tiwari. The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) will build a new two-lane bridge at the spot in a year. “We will start work on the new bridge in a month,” said Ram Jaiswar, executive engineer, MSRDC.