Ravi Bridge

Ravi Bridge

The Ravi Railway Bridge is situated between Sadiq Pura, Lahore and Shahdara Bagh on Ravi river. The construction work on this bridge was started in 1871 and completed in 1876. It is composed of 33 iron trusses over many brick piers protected from scour by concrete blocks.

The bridge became part of the Punjab Northern State Railway(PNSR) and provided a vital link in the Lahore to Peshawar line, 270 miles(430km)

The PNSR with threee associated bridges, was the first attempt of railway construction under the newly formed Public Works Department - Railway Branch.

Punjab Northern State Railway

The bridges were :-

• ‘Chenab / Alexandra Bridge’ over the River Chenab - shown as C on map
• ‘Jhelum Bridge’, over the River Jhelum - shoRn as J on map
• ‘Ravi Bridge’, over the River Ravi- shown as R on map

The bridge was constructed by the PNSR in accordance with Government Railway Gauge policy at the time (See separate page ‘Railway Gauge’ ). This policy was reversed in Jan 1874 and the conversion of this section to broad gauge(BG) was completed in 1876

The details of the construction are fully given in the ‘Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1878’ .

Personnel

• Francis Joseph Edward Spring was deployed from the Indian Imperial Civil Service's engineering section in 1873 as Consulting Engineer for the survey of the PNSR and the construction of various parts of that Railway and Bridges, including the Ravi Bridge.

Further Information

See Punjab Northern State Railway for information and map showing location of ‘Ravi Bridge’ and other PNSR Bridges
and North Western Railway for information after 1886