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Himalayan access
In the foothills of the Himalayas in northern India, a railway line is being constructed which will vastly improve access to the mountainous region near the border with Tibet – and mageba’s team in Kolkata is lending its expertise in providing sophisticated structural bearing solutions for some of the bridges along the route.
The ongoing project to create a new railway connection in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand, from the city of Rishikesh to the town of Karnaprayag, will reduce the travel time along the 125-kilometer route from 6.5 to 2.5 hours, thanks to the 17 tunnels and 35 bridges along the way which make up an astonishing 85% of the distance. It will thus greatly improve access to the whole border region, and in particular to Badrinath Temple, one of India’s sacred Char Dham pilgrimage sites. The project is expected to be completed by 2025, at a total cost of approximately 162 billion rupees, or about two billion US dollars.
To support the superstructures of a number of the bridges along the route, while accommodating their movements and rotations, mageba has supplied a large quantity of bearings, including:
210 RESTON®SPHERICAL bearings, designed for vertical loads of up to 14,510 kN and horizontal forces of up to 5,350 kN – most of them designed to additionally resist occasional uplift forces of up to 3,800 kN
16 RESTON®CYLINDER bearings, designed to support vertical loads of 23,000 kN
8 RESTON®FORCE horizontal force bearings (of both the fixed and guided-sliding types), to resist horizontal forces of 23,800 kN
92 RESTON®POT bearings, designed for vertical loads of up to 12,760 kN and horizontal forces of up to 3,500 kN
50 LASTO®HDRB (high damping rubber bearing) seismic isolators with load capacities of up to 1783 kN, designed to also resist uplift forces of up to 50 kN
80 m of TENSA®FINGER (Type RSFD) expansion joints for movements of +/- 40mm
Fortunately, mageba’s subsidiary in Kolkata had all the expertise and experience required to design and manufacture the wide variety of bearing types needed to optimise the construction of the various bridge structures along the route – and to continue supporting the rapid development of India’s transportation infrastructure, even in the most remote parts of the country.
Bridge designers: L&T IEL, AECOM, Luis Berger, aarvee associates
Contractors: Rahee Infratech Limited, GPT Infraprojects Limited
Owner: Rail Vikas Nigam Limited
