Pamban Railway Bridge : India’s first & only rail sea bridge

S Balakrishnan *

The Pamban Railway Bridge has many firsts to its credit. It is India’s first bridge across the sea. It was also the longest sea bridge until Mumbai’s Bandra-Worli 5.8 km-long Sea Link Bridge was opened in 2009. But the latter is a road bridge while the 2057 meter-long Pamban Bridge is a railway bridge. So Pamban Rail Bridge still holds the pride of being India’s first & only Rail Sea Bridge.

Though a road bridge was also constructed adjacent to it in 1988, here we are essentially talking about the railway bridge. An engineering marvel across the Palk Straits, the rail bridge’s special attraction is the facility to open it at a point to facilitate vessels to pass through!

The Pamban railway bridge, situated in Tamil Nadu, connects the sacred pilgrim centre Rameshwaram in Pamban Island with mainland India. It was opened for traffic in 1914. The 2057m bridge has 145 spans. The section that opens up is called Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge after the American Engineer & inventor, William Donald Scherzer (1858 –1893); he invented the rolling lift bridge to allow sea vessels to pass through.

This rolling bridge has a double leaf bascule section [bascule = a type of bridge with a section which can be raised and lowered using counterweights] that opens upwards at an angle of 90 degrees for vessels to pass through. Each leaf is 33.754 m long. They lock at the centre with, what is technically called, shear keys. The leaves are opened manually using levers.

The bridge was designed for the trains to run at a speed of 15kmph but the trains were actually running at 10kmph speed level as the bridge is situated over the sea. Hence the Pamban rail bridge is considered the most dangerous in India as it seems to hang over the blue sea waters.

The British initiated efforts for constructing such a rail bridge much earlier in the 1870s with a hope of expanding trade with Ceylon (Sri Lanka). However, the laying of railway line from Madurai to Pamban Island (on which Rameshwaram town & Dhanushkodi jetty were located) was done in bits & pieces.

The Madurai-Mandapam line (129.55 kms) was first opened on 01.08.1902. The 11.18 km-long Mandapam-Rameshwaram track was completed on 11.09.1906. From Rameswaram to Dhanushkodi Jetty in Dec. 1908 and further from there to Land’s End Dhanushkodi Point in 1914. With the completion of work on the rolling lift bridge, the whole section became operational in 1914 (24th Feb.).

The cantilever bridge had survived major cyclones that hit this island area. The cyclone of 22-23 December 1964 was the most devastating. The cyclone threw off an entire train that was passing on the bridge by washing away the bridge. All the (200) passengers of the Pamban-Dhanushkodi passenger train died along with the train. The tidal waves rose to a height of 23 ft with a wind velocity of 280 kmph.

The washed off bridge was later renovated and restored - remarkably very quickly - in just 46 days. It was further strengthened in 2009 for the transport of goods. But a survey conducted in 2019 concluded that due to high corrosion (due to salty sea wind) it was not possible to operate trains at the designed speed of 15kmph; it suggested strengthening or complete replacement of the bridge.

Meanwhile, the sensors sent two red alerts in December 2022 and since then the rail traffic has remained suspended. The trains terminate at Mandapam Station from where people travel by the road bridge (named after Indira Gandhi) to Rameshwaram. Work is already on to construct a new rail bridge which is expected to be over by July 2023.

It is estimated to cost Rs.540 crores for a distance of 2.2 km as it is on the sea. This new railway bridge will have a different version of opening for the vessels to pass through; this time it will have a vertical lift railway sea bridge, again India’s first of its kind.

As the train travels slowly & gingerly on this sea bridge, it is both a thrilling and scary experience. As a 10-year-old boy I had first travelled over this unique bridge with my heart almost bursting out of both excitement and fear.

The next trip on this bridge was some 50 years later. I took this chance to travel on the road bridge also for the first time and to have a good view of this rail bridge from there, which has become a tourist view point on the road bridge. But neither a train passed over it nor a vessel passed through it.

Hope I will experience this after the new rail bridge is opened by July this year. By the by, will the old rail bridge, India’s first, remain as a historical monument or will it be sold as scrap?