Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Asia’s second longest road and rail bridge

One of the symbolic structures of Rajamundry, besides its famous temples, are the three bridges connecting Kovvur and Rajahmundry, built across the river Godavari, the largest river in South India.
This July, whilst, travelling from Kakinada (my husband’s native place) to Guntur, we crossed this river via the Godavari bridge and luckily took a picture of one of the bridges.

The earliest bridge, Havelock bridge, was built in 1897 and after a decade has been decommissioned.

The second bridge, the Godavari bridge is a railroad bridge, 2.7 kilometres long, built in 1960's to facilitate travel via the rail and was commissioned by the Indian Railways. This is a truss bridge, with the superstructure made of steel. It carries a single railway track in the lower level, and two-way road, pedestrian pathways on the upper level. It is Asia’s second longest road and rail bridge.


Godavari Arch Bridge
 This was followed by the construction of the Godavari Arch Bridge, a bowstring-girder bridge which is probabaly one of the longest span of prestressed concrete arch bridge in Asia.
The bridge was built by the Hindustan Construction Company, for the Indian Railways.

  "The wise man travels to discover himself." - James Russell Lowell