Just a small compilation of the Mighty Pamban from different angles.
It's an incredible feeling to loiter on the adjacent road bridge with
breath taking view of the never ending Ocean. A good place to
contemplate amidst the cool breeze.
Pamban Bridge Playlist -
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...Pamban bridge is listed in the Top 10 Most Dangerous Railroads in the world -
http://www.mostinterestingfacts.com/t...After
the 1964 cyclone, the girders of Pamban bridge were replaced and an
anemometer was installed. When the wind speed crosses 55 km per hour,
signals on the bridge send out an automatic warning to approaching
trains.
This bridge was rebuilt in 1965 after the original bridge
collapsed during the "Tsunami" of December 1964. It is with the
reconstruction of the Pamban Bridge that Mr. E Sreedharan of Delhi Metro
made his initial mark.
A woman had a miraculous escape after
she fell off a moving train into the sea from the Pamban bridge. She
opened the compartment door mistaking it for the toilet and fell into
the sea -
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/in...The
Pamban bridge is a type of cantilever bridge on the Palk Strait
connects Rameswaram on Pamban Island to mainland India. It refers to
both the road bridge and the cantilever railway bridge, though primarily
it means the latter. It was India's first sea bridge. It is the second
longest sea bridge in India (after Bandra Worli Sea Link) at a length of
about 2.3 km.
Until 1911 people crossed by boat to visit an ancient Ram temple at Rameswaram. Jeez boat !!!
The
railway bridge is 6,776 ft (2,065 m) and was opened for traffic in
1914. The railroad bridge is a still functioning double leaf bascule
bridge section that can be raised to let ships pass under the bridge.
The
railway bridge historically carried meter gauge trains on it, but
Indian Railways upgraded the bridge to carry broad gauge trains in a
project that finished Aug. 12, 2007. Until recently, the two leaves of
the bridge were opened manually using levers by workers. About 10 ships,
cargo carriers, coast guard ships, fishing vessels and oil tankers,
pass through the bridge every month.
The bridge is located at the
"world's second highly corrosive environment", next to Miami, US,
making the construction a challenging job. The location is also a
cyclone-prone high wind velocity zone.
It sits on an artificial
sandstone reef. Nearly 5,000 tonnes of cement, 18,000 cubic feet of
crushed metal stone, 2,600 tonnes of steel and 80,000 cubic feet of
boulders were used to build it.
The bridge has 145 fixed spans,
and one-navigation span (a total of 225 feet) that opens for ships. The
drawbridge at the center comprises two sections of the navigation span,
called the Scherzer span. Each weighs 415 tonnes.