Metro Rail works on fast track : Hyderabad

Metro Rail works on fast track:

Authorities plan to complete railway crossings through RoBs before monsoon Searing heat notwithstanding, its hectic work season for the Metro Rail engineers and on site workers to build ‘straight’, ‘curved’ and ‘pre-fabricated’ bridges as they race against time to complete at least a couple of railway crossings through the Road over Bridges (ROBs) at Alugadda Bavi and Chilkalguda near the Secunderabad railway station before the monsoon.

The Hyderabad Metro Rail viaduct, upon which the twin tracks are to be laid, will be crossing the railway lines at eight locations across the three corridors where the project is coming up in the city. Railway crossings were completed at Bharatnagar on Corridor One – LB Nagar to Miyapur.

With a few hours break in the afternoon, the work goes on incessantly almost round-the-clock to complete as much as possible in the next few months. With the cooperation of South Central Railway (SCR) authorities, metro rail engineers have taken 19 traffic time blocks of three hours each when there is no movement of passenger trains at Chilkalguda. For work on Bharatnagar, 14 traffic blocks of three hours each were taken, explains HMR Managing Director N.V.S. Reddy.

“We have chosen three methods to crossover railway lines depending on the topography and operational constraints. We also have to look for and shift of utilities both overhead and underground in the construction, plus the vehicular traffic and pedestrians flow,” chip in L&TMRH senior officials.

Since piers or pillars cannot be put in between railway tracks, large spans from 165 ft to 275 ft are being built with work to be carried out at double height or 50ft - 65 ft from ground level to accommodate double-decker trains at Chilkalguda, Alugadda Bavi besides, Malakpet and Bhoiguda.

Chilkalguda and Alugadda Bavi along with Bharatnagar ROBs are ‘straight spans’ where a launch girder is erected on temporary steel structures and gantry crane put on top.

Precast segments are brought by a truck, lifted and positioned atop before being glued and ‘tightened’ with cables.

‘Curved bridges’ are going to be attempted for rail crossovers at Begumpet, Lakidikapul and Malakpet due to a curved road alignment where a special crane is erected on deck slab for segments to be attached one by one. The crane moves along both sides till the arms from both ends are joined.