World's Highest Rail Bridge

The world's highest rail bridge being built across Chenab Riverbed in Reasi district of Jammu and Kashmir

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 The arch bridge will connect Baramulla to Jammu via Udhampur-Katra-Qazigund with a travel time of six-and-a-half hours.Currently, it takes exactly double the time - 13 hours - to reach Jammu from Baramulla in northern Kashmir, which is 60 km from Srinagar

The construction of the bridge started in 2002 when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister.It got stopped in 2008 when the project was announced to be unsafe. However, the construction restarted in 2010. It has been declared as a national project now. The bridge is coming up at Salal village in Reasi

 The entire project has been allotted to two contractors -Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd and Afcon India Pvt Ltd.

The 1.3-km-long bridge is being constructed between Salal A and Salal B stations. It will be able to take the load of 18 train coaches at one time and project officials are using steel girder plates to install it using cable cranes.

The steel plates have been procured from the Bhilai plant of Steel Authority of India while the girders are assembled at a fabrication workshop built adjacent to the bridge.

"Each girder plate is 8-metre long and we have estimated that 161 girders will be required for the purpose," said Saumendra Roy Chaudhary, GM, Afcon.

Railway officials say the bridge, which is five times more than Delhi's Qutub Minar and way higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris, will be completed by December 2016