Second Mahanadi Rail Bridge

About

The Second Mahanadi Rail Bridge is a rail bridge over the Mahanadi near Cuttack in the Indian state of Odisha.

The first Mahanadi Rail Bridge was opened on 1 January 1899. It had 64 spans of 100 feet (30 meters) each, on wells 19 ft 6 in (5.94 meters) in diameter sunk to 60 ft (18 meters) below low water level. The engineer in charge of construction of the first Mahanadi Rail Bridge was William Beckett, who won a gold medal from the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1901 for a paper he presented on the bridge construction.

The 2.1 km (1.3 mi) long Second Mahanadi Rail Bridge was built at a cost of ₹120 crore (US$12 million) and commissioned in 2008. The bridge has been designed for a train speed of 160 km per hour (99.41 miles per hour). "Adequate steps" are said to have been taken to ensure the bridge can withstand earthquake shocks.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.