Kottayam: The Southern Railway on Saturday dismantled the old Railway Over Bridge at Nagampadam, which had survived two consistent demolition attempts in April.
Beginning on Friday midnight, the demolition was carried out in 10 stages and extended till Saturday midnight. By 5.30 pm, they completed about half of the process.
“The works have progressed as scheduled till now, and we are hopeful of restoring the rail traffic by 1 am on Sunday,” a Railway official said.
Before beginning the works, the tracks underneath was covered with sandbags to prevent the fall of debris, followed by a clearing of the overhead power cables and related technical jobs. Soon, metal blocks were fixed underneath the structure, and the arc beams on both sides were the first to be sliced off. By 9 am, the first beam could be brought down while the second one was lifted off by noon. “The bows, which carried the ROB’s load, was razed in four stages while the road-surface portion was dismantled in six phases. The concrete blocks cut down from the structure will be pulverised and used for landfilling,” the official said. The Southern Railway had announced a 24-hour suspension of rail traffic through Kottayam to enable the demolition. While the long haul services were diverted through Alappuzha, 42 passenger and MEMU services remained cancelled during the period.
The trains diverted through the Alappuzha route were provided additional stoppages at Erna-kulam South, besides two minutes at Alappuzha and one minute at Cherthala and Haripad each. The KSRTC too operated additional services to clear the rush.
The latest plan to take down the 60-year-old ROB was formulated in consultations with an expert team, which inspected the structure earlier this month.
The back to back attempts by the authorities to implode the bridge on April 26 invited much public attention for its failure to bring down the structure. A review by the railway authority later attributed the failure to circuitry issues.
The old ROB was replaced by a new structure last year as part of track-doubling work between Ettumanoor and Chingavanam and the second phase expansion of the MC Road.
