Garmukteshwar Bridge
Garmukteshwar Bridge
This bridge over the River Ganges(Ganga) is located on the ‘Moradabad-Ghaziabad Branch’, opened in 1900 by the Oudh and Rohilkhand Railway (O&RR). The O&RR merged into the ‘East Indian Railway’(EIR) in 1925 and became a branch of the ‘EIR Northern Main Line’.
It is recorded that [1]
“The bridge is 409 km downstream from the source of the River Ganga and consists of 11 spans of 1 mtr each and carries a single track broad gauge(BG) line. At the time of construction of bridge, river within a width of 7-8 km was flowing. The Railway line on either side of the bridge is having curves towards upstream side. These curves were purposely provided to touch holy place of Garmukteshwar. Immediately after construction of the bridge, the river started shifting towards left and an embayment took place behind the left guide bund in 1903. At that time 600 feet long neutral spur was provided. River straightened itself and no serious problem was faced till 1947. During the flood of 1948, an onward problem again started. To safeguard the bridge, river training work had been further strengthened after getting a study conducted by the University of Roorkee in 1997.Being built of early steel, regirdering work has been sanctioned. Fabrication work of girders is in progress in Engineering Workshop, Manmad of the Central Railway. It will be a challenging task to do the regirdering work without disrupting the railway traffic”