Hardinge Bridge
Coordinates: 24 ° 4 ′ 4 ″ N , 89 ° 1 ′ 45 ″ E
| Hardinge Bridge হার্ডিঞ্জ ব্রিজ |
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| use | Railway bridge | |
| Crossing of | Padma | |
| place | near the place Paksey in Bangladesh | |
| construction | Truss bridge | |
| overall length | 1624 m | |
| Longest span | 100 m | |
| building-costs | approximately £ 2.1 million | |
| start of building | 1910 | |
| completion | 1915 | |
| opening | March 4, 1915 | |
| planner | Robert Richard Gales | |
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The Hardinge Bridge ( Bengali হার্ডিঞ্জ ব্রিজ , English Hardinge Bridge ) is a 1.6 kilometer long railway bridge over the Padma near Paksey in Bangladesh . The bridge was built from 1910 to 1915 and is named after the then Viceroy and Governor General of British India , Lord Hardinge .
history
The first official proposals from the Eastern Bengal Railway to build a railway bridge over the Padma were made as early as 1889. The railway bridge was supposed to connect Calcutta , the then residence of the viceroy, with the province of Assam in the northeast. A commission was set up to assess the feasibility of such a structure. In 1902, FJE Spring was commissioned with the specific planning. After extensive studies of the flow conditions in the Ganges / Padma Delta, a location on the lower reaches of the Ganges was selected as a suitable location for a bridge. In December 1908 the construction of the bridge was ordered by the then Secretary of State for India John Morley . Construction of the actual bridge began in 1910 under the direction of chief engineer Robert Richard Gales .
The bridge was designed as a truss bridge made of steel girders with an underlying carriageway. It consists of a total of 21 arches. 15 arches, each 105.16 meters long, span the river and are flanked on both sides by three arches, each 22.86 meters. The total length of the bridge is 1624 meters. A total of 27,500 tons of steel and 1.7 million rivets were used. The 16 bridge piers are made of concrete in the lower section and steel framework in the upper section. More than 24,000 workers were employed on the construction work, including the bank reinforcement and surrounding work. The total cost of the bridge construction was £ 1,393,000 . Added to this was £ 705,650 for river engineering. The bridge connects the broad-gauge railway network south of the Ganges with the historic meter- gauge railways north of it.
The single-lane opening for freight transport took place on January 1, 1915. The opening for the two-lane freight and passenger transport followed on March 4, 1915 in the presence of the viceroy, after whom it was named.
The construction in a comparatively short time was regarded as a logistical masterpiece. Not only did all of the building materials have to be transported from a long distance, with the infrastructure being very patchy overall, but new settlements with a corresponding residential infrastructure for the workers also had to be created. Electric power stations were built on both sides of the structure to provide electricity for the construction machines. The steel for the bridge arches was made in the United Kingdom, the arches were manufactured in Liverpool and shipped to British India. From 1914 onwards, ship transport was severely disrupted by the First World War, in particular by the German small cruiser SMS Emden operating in the Indian Ocean . Three arches were lost at sea. More than 900 meters of the banks of the Padma upstream and 300 meters downstream were paved in order to stabilize the course of the river.
Damage
On September 25, 1933, when the Padma flooded, the right bank was submerged over a width of 120 meters. In spite of the immediately initiated security measures, there was another sub-wash on October 7th of the same year, this time at a width of almost 490 meters. The backup and reconstruction work required a full two years of intensive work. The bridge was badly damaged in the Bangladesh war in December 1971. By October 1972 it was provisionally repaired with the help of Indian engineers. The complete repair of the damage lasted until August 1975.
Modern times
For many decades since its opening, the bridge has been the only connection between the railway networks in meter gauge - north of the Ganges and in Indian broad gauge south of it. This only changed after the opening of the Bangabandhu Bridge over the Jamuna in 1998. Even today, the Hardinge Bridge is of central importance for the Bangladesh Railway . From July 1997 to February 2004, the Lalon Shah Bridge was built as a road bridge about 300 meters downstream . It is clearly visible from the Hardinge Bridge.
There were several ceremonies and events on the centenary of the bridge's inauguration on March 4, 2015. The bridge is now a tourist magnet and an important bridge structure from the British colonial era.
- Different views of the bridge
Superstructure of the bridge
Entrance to the bridge
View from the shore at dusk
Web links
- Hardinge Bridge at structurae.de
- Video 1 and Video 2 of a trip over the Hardinge Bridge (YouTube)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d A. Ghoshal: Saga of hundred years of Hardinge bridge. ABSE-JSCE Joint Conference on Advances in Bridge Engineering-III, August 21-22, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh. ISBN 978-984-33-9313-5 . PDF pp. 77-91
- ^ RGR Tappin, Vardaman Jones, IA Khan: Hardinge Bridge to Padma Bridge - 100 years of Major River Crossings in Bangladesh. PDF
- ↑ a b Hardinge Bridge centenary celebrated. The Daily Observer, March 4, 2015, accessed February 27, 2016 .
- ↑ Paksey Bridge Construction Project (I) (II) (L / A No. BD-P42, BD-P50). (pdf) Retrieved February 27, 2016 (English).
- ↑ Ahmed Humayun Kabir Topu: Hardinge Bridge: A hundred-year old structure still stands strong. The Daily Star, March 18, 2015, accessed February 27, 2016 .