Railway conducts special structural audit of bridges

PUNE: The Central Railway’s Pune division has started a special structural audit of all its bridges, including the foot and rail overbridges.

This comes in the wake of the recent collapse of a rail overbridge at Andheri in Mumbai. Five persons were injured in the accident.

“We regularly check all the bridges for any structural faults at regular intervals. But after the recent accident in Mumbai, we have received instructions to carry out a special structural audit of the structures again. In accordance with the instructions, the checks are stringent,” Pune divisional railway manager (DRM) Milind Deouskar said on Thursday.

Another official said as per their studies, there were no distress bridges under the Pune division.

“A team of engineers is examining the bridges and will file a report soon. The bridges are usually checked before and after the monsoon. Following the fresh instructions, we are studying the bridges again and ensuring not to miss out on any issue related to their structure,” the official said.

At present, the Pune rail division has 34 foot overbridges, 22 rail overbridges around 1,000 other bridges. “Among them, 30 are major bridges. But many of them are small structures. But we are inspecting all,” the official said.

A road overbridge (ROB) had collapsed on rail tracks in suburban Andheri as heavy rain lashed Mumbai on Thursday, bringing local services of the Western Railway to a halt.

Six people were injured in the incident, and two of them were seriously hurt. One of the victims later died.