Mumbai: Western Railway replaces corroded girders of railway bridge above Mithi river during lockdown.

Western Railway (WR) has undertaken regirdering of a bridge on Virar-bound fast corridor above Mithi river between Bandra and Mahim during the lockdown period by ensuring social distancing.

The bridge, whose work was pending for almost three years, is a steel girder bridge having six spans of 9.15 m and seven cross girder of length 5.8 m .

WR's chief public relations officer Ravinder Bhakar said, "Due to highly corrosive environment of Mumbai suburban being a coastal city, the steel members of bridge got corroded and required urgent replacement."

This work required complete shutdown of traffic for 8 hours on three consecutive days which would have resulted in cancellation of at least 250 number of suburban services and cancellation and delay of atleast 60 passenger trains in WR suburban section.

Since trains are not running due to lockdown, WR decided to undertake the work now.

He further said "Mumbai division thought of utilizing the period of lock down to execute this work of re girdering by complying the norms of social distancing."

Two crane of 200 MT capacity, 8 nos Farana crane, 20 nos Hydra and 18 nos JCB were deployed for this work apart from 40 track maintainers and contractual labor in each shift and dedicated team of Pway supervisors and officers.

He said, "All pre-block activity was completed on April 29 and machinery was stabled at planned location."

On April 30, work started from 9am and completed at 8pm. The track was certified fit for train movement at 11.30pm.

Bhakar said, "Due to meticulous planning, this regirdering work, which was pending from last 3 years, was completed during lockdown."

TOI