The Western Railway said that they called for tenders a few days ago and shall soon begin construction of a new bridge over the now demolished Delisle Bridge at a cost of Rs 84 crore. On the intervening night between February 2 and 3, it was race against time for the WR to demolish the Delisle bridge in only 10 and a half hours.

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"We have already called for tenders for the new bridge. It will be ready in 10 months once work begins," confirmed AK Gupta, General Manager, Western Railway. The WR authorities are finalising the designs for the new road over bridge. The 26.7-metre-wide bridge will have a road and a footpath. The curvature of this bridge will be less skewed and it will be 85 metre in length. This new bridge will cross all railway lines.

Meanwhile, on the intervening night between February 2 and 3, over 850 men worked in bringing down this bridge completely. Sources said that there were 10 steel girders that had to be cut using 173 gas-cutters. They also used five heavy duty cranes for the purpose of dismantling the bridge.

The dismantling of this bridge is said to be complicate than the ones done at Hancock and Masjid in the past. Senior WR officials said that these bridges were straighter and easy to dismantle, even though it was made of steel and stones.

None of the pillars supporting the bridge and fitted to the ground between two rail lines, have been removed. Meanwhile, 58 other pieces of work apart from the dismantling was also carried out. These include cleaning the ballasts and stones on the tracks, replacing worn out tracks and sleepers, realigning the curves of tracks for a smoother ride, and so on.

Railway lines were shut between Churchgate and Dadar and megablocks were carried out wherever needed. The pieces of work included cleaning of drains, replacing pipes, installing covers over roofs at platforms. There was also construction work carried out on foot over bridges, ticket booking offices, and other areas.

ABOUT THE BRIDGE

  • 302: Number of pieces of concrete slabs of road cut
  • 2-2.5 metre: Length of each steel pillar being cut into
  • 4-6 tonne: Weight of this 2-2.5 tonne pillar
  • Sept 9: Work of cutting concrete and tar road began
  • Dec 6: Cutting work completed
  • 250 tonne: Holding weight of the crane
  • Rs 7.5 crore: Cost of dismantling