The Chenab Bridge Stands 359 Metres Above Its River, Was Designed for a 266 km/h Wind and a Blast, and Opened More Than 20 Years After Its Contract

The Chenab Rail Bridge carries its track 359 metres above the riverbed and is 1,315 metres long, figures that appear both in the Press Information Bureau (PIB) releases and in the fact sheet of Konkan Railway Corporation. Its single steel arch spans 467 metres. Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened the bridge on 6 June 2025 and flagged off the Katra to Srinagar Vande Bharat train, which PIB says brings the trip down to about three hours.

The bridge stands in Reasi district between the villages of Bakkal and Kauri, on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL). WSP’s fact sheet names Konkan Railway as the client, acting for Northern Railway. The contractor was Afcons Infrastructure. The design came from WSP Finland, with Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner (LAP) of Germany as subconsultant.

How it compares with the Eiffel Tower

PIB’s explainer of 4 June 2025 says the bridge rises 35 metres higher than the Eiffel Tower. That sum uses the 324 metres Konkan Railway’s own sheet gives for the tower. The Eiffel Tower’s official shop says the monument has stood at 330 metres since 15 March 2022, when a digital antenna added 6 metres, which leaves a margin of 29 metres.

The 359 metres is measured from the riverbed. Pekka Pulkkinen of WSP, who led the design, writes in the engineering magazine e-mosty that the superstructure sits about 350 metres above the surface of the river. Konkan Railway lists 17 spans, with the 467 metre arch in the middle and a tallest steel pier of 131 metres. The Ministry of Railways calls it the world’s highest railway arch bridge.

The steel is counted three ways

WSP’s fact sheet gives the total steel as 27,000 tons. Konkan Railway’s sheet says about 29,000 tonnes. The contractor’s figure is the highest. Afcons’s summary of principal quantities lists 31,062 tonnes of structural steel fabricated and erected, and Pulkkinen also writes of 31,000 tonnes of steel components in the design documents. None of the documents says why the totals differ.

The arch is made of two inclined ribs of steel boxes, eight boxes in all. LAP engineer Kilian Karius writes that they are filled with self-compacting concrete, which prevents local buckling of the plates and improves the structure’s dynamic performance. Plate thickness runs from 12 to 70 millimetres, and the design life is 120 years.

Built for a 266 km/h wind and a blast

Konkan Railway’s sheet gives the maximum designed wind speed as 266 km/h, and the Afcons article in e-mosty says the same. PIB’s explainer says 260 km/h. Karius writes that a three-second gust of up to 87 metres a second (about 313 km/h) at a 120-year return period decides the design of the lateral members, chiefly the wind bracings. The documents do not reconcile that with the 74 metres a second behind the 266 figure.

The site made standard wind models unreliable. WSP says wind tunnel tests at FORCE Technology in Denmark began with a large model of the gorge, which showed the mean wind tilting up to 11 degrees from horizontal and turbulence ranging from 7 to 55 percent depending on direction. Afcons says trains must stop when the wind passes 90 km/h.

The design basis also set two blast cases, according to Pulkkinen: a blast at ground level next to a pier or abutment, and a contact blast on the steel deck with a train on the centre track. The arch trusses could not be damaged and no span could collapse, and any damage had to be repairable. A sacrificial steel net over the deck was added to protect the main structure. Afcons says the blast design was done in consultation with the Defence Research and Development Organisation, a first in India.

The site is in seismic zone V, the highest rating in the Indian code, and IIT Roorkee produced site-specific earthquake spectra. The engineers also checked that the bridge could lose one arch member, or a whole pier, and still stand.

An arch built from two cliffs

Roads to the site were narrow and slide-prone, and trailers could carry steel plates no longer than 12 metres. So Afcons built workshops at Bakkal and Kauri and made the segments there. Material came from a yard at Reasi, 35 kilometres away, on 9.8 metre trailers.

The arch went up from both banks. WSP says a suspension cable crane lifted one 35-ton block at a time, and the two halves hung from steel cables anchored to the foundations. Konkan Railway gives the crane’s span as 915 metres. Afcons stopped arch erection whenever the wind passed 15 metres a second, and surveyed the geometry at dawn to avoid temperature distortion. LAP’s project timeline lists the closure of the arch on 8 April 2021, and WSP dates the joining of the halves to late March 2021. The deck was then pushed out in sections from both banks over the arch. LAP’s timeline lists a golden joint ceremony on 16 August 2022. Construction World used that name for the point where the deck segments launched from both ends met.

Engineers from Afcons, WSP and LAP wrote up the construction for Structural Engineering International in 2023. The International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering gave the paper its 2024 Outstanding Paper Award in the technical report category.

More than twenty years from contract to train

ETV Bharat reported in February 2019 that the project was awarded in August 2004 with a first deadline of February 2007, and had received four extensions since. Pulkkinen writes that the design contract was signed in December 2004. In 2008 the work halted because the basic data on the site and the rail alignment were uncertain, and it restarted in 2010. New contour and soil results at one arch foundation then lengthened the main span from 460 to 467 metres.

ETV Bharat also reported that work had stood still since October 2018 and that officials were still promising a December 2019 finish. It carried an objection as well. E Sreedharan, the former metro chief who sat on an expert committee reviewing rail track safety, opposed building the bridge near the Line of Control, citing the risk of terror attacks, air strikes and natural disasters. The estimate in that report was ₹1,200 crore, and PIB’s 2025 explainer gives the project cost as ₹1,486 crore.

The line around it

The bridge is one structure on a 272 km line. PIB puts the cost at ₹43,780 crore, with 36 tunnels spanning 119 km and 943 bridges. A Lok Sabha reply of March 2023 had put the anticipated cost at ₹37,012 crore. How the line was sanctioned in 1994-95 and completed in pieces is in our account of the railway to Kashmir.

Konkan Railway’s sheet describes the geology of its Katra to Dharam stretch, which includes the Chenab site, as three major thrust zones, Reasi, Murree and Panjal. The rock runs from loose conglomerate and clay to crushed and faulted stone and dolomite. It says the geology changes so often that it cannot be fully mapped in advance, so designs were adjusted as work went on. PIB adds that Jammu and Kashmir’s tracks are fully electrified, part of the push covered in how India electrified its railway in a decade.

Close to the Chenab, the Anji Khad Bridge is India’s first cable-stayed railway bridge, 725 metres long. PIB says the Vande Bharat sets on the line are built to run in temperatures down to minus 20 degrees Celsius. The numbers on the Vande Bharat programme are set out separately.

The trains, and the one that does not run

When Modi flagged off the first service in June 2025, the train had 8 coaches. PIB’s release of 29 April 2026 says it had run full since, and the rake was lengthened to 20 coaches. From 30 April 2026 the service was extended to Jammu Tawi, about 266 km from Srinagar, with two pairs of trains, each pair running six days a week. The morning train takes 4 hours 50 minutes. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at the flag-off that more than 5.5 lakh passengers had travelled on the service, the Daily Pioneer reported.

No train runs directly between Delhi and Srinagar. Minister of State for Railways Ravneet Singh Bittu said in Srinagar on 6 June 2025 that a direct Delhi service was expected by the end of that year, The Tribune reported. Outlook reported on 13 January 2026 that it had not started. Northern Railway officials told Outlook that the decision must involve the police because it is a security matter, and that sleeper trains between Delhi and Srinagar were under consideration. PIB’s April 2026 release says passengers who arrive at Jammu Tawi from Delhi will be able to board the Vande Bharat directly.

Jammu Tawi station is being rebuilt from three platforms to seven at a cost of ₹450 crore. Uchit Singhal, the senior divisional commercial manager at Jammu, told PTI in July 2026 that the whole redevelopment is scheduled to finish by December 2027.