PAMBAN

BRIDGE
INTRODUCTION:
• Pamban Bridge is a railway bridge which connects the town of
Rameswaram on Pamban Island to mainland India.
• Spanning 2 km between the mainland and the island, it is the
second longest sea bridge in India after the 2.3-km Bandra-
Worli sea link on Mumbai's western coast and turned 100 years
in February, 2014.
LOCATION:
•The bridge is located in the world's second most
corrosive environment after Florida, making its
maintenance a challenging job.
•The location is also a cyclone-prone high wind
velocity zone.
HISTORY AND PLANNING:
•Plans for a bridge to connect to mainland was suggested
in 1870 as the British Administration sought ways to
increase trade with Ceylon.
•The construction began in August 1911 and was opened
on 24 February 1914.
•The adjacent road bridge was opened in 1988.
DESIGN:
•The rail bridge is, for the most part, a
conventional bridge resting on concrete piers,
but has a double-leaf bascule section midway,
which can be raised to let ships and barges pass
through.
•It is 12.5 metres above the sea level and consists
of 143 piers.
•The two leaves of the bridge are opened
manually using levers, still functional even though
it was constructed more than a century ago.
RAILWAY:
•The railway bridge carried metre gauge trains
connecting Mandapam on mainland India to
Pamban.
•Indian Railways upgraded the bridge to carry
broad gauge trains and the work was completed
on 12 August 2007.
•The speed of trains on the bridge is limited to
15kmph, though it has been planned to increase
the speed to 30kmph and eventually to 45kmph.
•From Pamban, the railway line bifurcated, one
line towards Rameshwaram about 6.25 miles
(10.06 km) up and another branch line of 15
miles (24 km) terminating at Dhanushkodi.

•The train ran up to Dhanushkodi until 1964 when

the metre-gauge branch line from Pamban to
Dhanushkodi was destroyed during the 1964
Dhanushkodi cyclone.
ACCIDENTS:
•On 23 December 1964, an estimated 7.6 m (25 ft) storm
surge struck the island, overturning the Pamban-
Dhanuskodi passenger train killing all 150 passengers on
board.
•On 13 January 2013, the bridge suffered minor damage
when a naval barge drifted into it.
•As of 5 December 2018, the bridge was closed due to a
crack in the bridge and the maintenance work is going
on.
MAINTENANCE:
•Strengthening work was carried out on the bridge under
the supervision of E. Sreedharan in 2009 to enable it to
carry goods trains.
•To increase the speed on the bridge, girders have been
coated with anti-corrosive coating.
•This coating consists of Zinc rich High Performance
Coating, Acrylic Polisinoxane based coating and
Copolymatric anticorrosive based high performance
coating.
FUN FACT