Two teams, led by the Railway Board Advisor N.K. Sinha from New Delhi and Divisional Railway Manager of the South Central Railway Ashok Kumar from Vijayawada, arrived on Wednesday to assess the damage caused to the hangers of Arch Bridge constructed across River Godavari.
Mr. Sinha and his team did a motor trolley inspection of all 58 arches and 28 spans between the Godavari railway station to Kovvuru station in the afternoon .
“At the pillar number 19, we noticed a month ago that the seventh hanger of the 10th arch was damaged. Since heavy traffic during the Pushkaram on the Chennai-Kolkata line did not allow us to take up the required measures, we decided to allow trains to ply at a lower speed of 20 km per hour on the third bridge which is functioning now,” said DRM Ashok Kumar.
Besides replacing one particular hanger, five more dina hangers need to be replaced as precautionary measures, he said and made it clear that it was purely a technical issue and it would not affect the safety of the passenger trains.
“The Board has approved the proposal and we are waiting for the sanction. We will start works on the third line within the next three months and we have set a target of three years to complete the project”.