The Elephant Gate Bridge near Chennai Central is set to become history. Starting today, Southern Railway has decided to begin demolition of the 105 year old bridge between Basin Bridge and Chennai Central stations.
Numbered by Southern Railway as Bridge 9R, Elephant Bridge acts as the entry/exit point for the trains coming in and going out of Chennai Central.
The narrow bridge, just about 50 metres wide, allowed only about 8 lines to go under it. On one side of the bridge is the Basin Bridge station, Basin Bridge Coaching Depot and the now-defunct Salt Cotaurs Parcel Depot (now made space two suburban tracks laid).
On the other side is the sprawling Chennai Central station with 12 functional platforms and many parcel and other small sidings for parking short rakes, tourist coaches, and accident relief trains. The other side also has the Chennai Central Suburban terminal that has 5 platforms and a couple of extra lines to park idling EMUs.
With such sprawling railway utilities on either side, the narrow bridge was acting as a chicken’s neck, often holding up various services and infuriating passengers. Even the construction of two additional slow lines for EMUs towards Arakkonam has only partially helped.
The Railways had proposed to demolish the close to 105-year old bridge and build a new one for the Chennai Corporation. After long years of to and fro, Chennai Corporation accepted the proposal.
There was a further small delay in shifting a lot of utilities’ cables from the bridge. The Chennai Traffic Police had also barricaded the bridge and stopped all traffic for a few months now.
With all this work completed, and the lockdown preventing any traffic, Southern Railway is utilizing the time to demolish the bridge over a week beginning today. The officials have announced a slew of diversions and changes to the workmen and parcel specials over the next two days. The details are:
· Workmen specials will be dealt from Chennai Beach instead of Chennai Central, with rakes being maintained at Chennai Egmore.
· Most parcel specials will be diverted to Chennai Egmore.
“This new bridge will be about 150 metres wide – large enough to accommodate a large number of lines. This will eliminate the bottleneck and allow more simultaneous operations,” according to official sources. He also added, “hopefully, all the waiting for the passengers almost at the doorstep of the terminal station should be a thing of the past once the bridge is ready.”
The same hope is reflected by some regular passengers. “Most times, the Charminar Express from Hyderabad is well before time at Ennore and Tiruvottiyur. However, this bottleneck holds up the train and we end up reaching Chennai Central well after the scheduled arrival – a colossal waste of up to an hour,” says Sriram, a regular traveller.
Hopefully, the new bridge will end the woes of both the passengers and the Southern Railway officials in one fell swoop.
Thanks a lot to railways
Eventhough i am retired now during my service periods i have to wait for more than half an hour while coming from delhi or mumbai
Even emus will be stopped from arakkonam to central
So hatsoff
Let us comeout from the old
As metre gauges are converted to broadgauge
These type of works also to be done for development of India