The New Pamban Bridge Lifts a 72.5-Metre Railway Span 17 Metres for Ships, 111 Years After an American-Designed Rolling-Lift Span Opened the Same Crossing

The New Pamban Bridge, opened on 6 April 2025, carries trains to Rameswaram over a steel span 72.5 metres long that rises 17 metres to let ships pass. The Press Information Bureau (PIB), the central government’s press office, calls it India’s first vertical-lift railway sea bridge. Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL), a state-owned company under the Ministry of Railways, built it beside the 1914 bridge it replaced, across the Palk Strait between Mandapam on the mainland and Pamban Island, where Rameswaram stands.

The crossing has a longer record than the new bridge. The first Pamban bridge carried the line for more than a century, according to PIB. Its rolling-lift span stood through the cyclone of December 1964, which washed away most of the viaduct around it, and the track was repaired in about 45 or 46 days, depending on the account.

What the new bridge is

PIB’s release of 6 April 2025 gives the figures: 2.08 km long, 99 spans, and a 72.5-metre vertical lift span that rises up to 17 metres. The Ministry of Railways explainer PIB published on 4 April gives the length as 2.07 km. The substructure is built for two tracks, and the superstructure carries one line for now. The reinforcing steel is stainless, the joints are fully welded, and a polysiloxane coating (a protective layer applied against corrosion) shields the steel from sea air. PIB gives a design life of more than 100 years.

The new deck sits 3 metres higher than the old one. DT Next reported in November 2024 that the clearance for ships is 22 metres above sea level, against 19 metres under the old bridge. RVNL’s director (operations) told the news agency PTI that the new girders, the long beams that carry the track, stand 4.8 metres above the sea, while the old bridge’s girders stood 2.1 metres above it. At high tide, he said, water splashed the old girders and sometimes the track.

On opening day PIB reported that the Prime Minister inaugurated the bridge, flagged off the new Rameswaram to Tambaram (Chennai) train and a ship from the road bridge, and watched the span operate. Speaking in Rameswaram, he noted that the town is the land of Bharat Ratna Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

The first bridge, and the Scherzer span that opened it in 1914

Scroll reports that the 2,065-metre bridge opened on 24 February 1914, with the governor of Madras, John Sinclair, presiding. Its builders used about 2,000 tonnes of steel, Rs 70 lakh was allocated for the bridge, and cyclones and a cholera outbreak slowed the work, Scroll adds. Accounts differ on the year construction began, so this article gives only the opening date.

Incredible India, the Ministry of Tourism’s portal, records 143 piers and a double-leaf section of the Scherzer rolling-lift type, whose two leaves were opened by hand with levers. It was the only link between Rameswaram and the mainland until a road bridge opened in 1988. Scroll says the Boat Mail, which ran from Madras to Ceylon, crossed it from 1914. PIB describes the bridge as a lifeline for pilgrims, tourists and trade for over a century.

The Movable Bridge Hall of Fame traces the design to William Donald Scherzer, born in Peru, Illinois, in 1858. He had worked in Chicago, where swing bridges (which pivot sideways on a central pier) obstructed the river, and he looked for a bridge that needed no pier in the channel. His answer was a double-leaf bascule, a drawbridge whose two halves tilt up from the banks, with a twist: the leaves rotate upward and also roll back away from the channel.

Rolling cuts friction. The Hall of Fame says the sliding friction in a conventional pivot bearing is about 15 times the rolling friction, and that a rolling-lift span can be 10 to 20 percent shorter than a pivoting one. Scherzer died of typhoid on 20 July 1893, aged 35, and his patent was granted posthumously on 26 December 1893. The Hall of Fame counts more than 150 such spans built between 1895 and 1915 and lists the Pamban railway bridge of 1914 among the major ones. Scroll gives the Pamban span as 65.23 metres.

December 1964, and the 46 days after

A cyclone struck the coast on the night of 22 December 1964. RVNL’s director (operations) puts its wind at about 160 kmph. Scroll cites an estimate of 280 km/h and tidal waves up to 23 feet. The estimates differ, and both are attributed here to the people who gave them.

The Ministry of Railways later described what happened to the Pamban to Dhanushkodi passenger train, as PTI relayed it. The six-coach train left Pamban at 11.55 pm with 110 passengers, among them a party of students, and five railway staff. The signal at Dhanushkodi went dead and the train stopped, then a wave about 20 feet high struck it. Initial reports counted 115 casualties from the tickets sold at Pamban, and the ministry said the toll was suspected to be about 200 because more people had travelled without tickets. The Southern Railway issued its bulletin on the tragedy on 25 December. Apart from the train, the ministry said, the death toll on the island exceeded 500. Scroll gives an official toll of 1,800 for Dhanushkodi, and The News Minute says more than 2,000 died in the storm.

On the bridge, the ministry said the Pamban viaduct was washed away, leaving the piers, a few concrete girders and the lifting span. RVNL’s director said the Scherzer span “survived the cyclone and was not damaged.”

The News Minute’s profile of E Sreedharan, the engineer who later led the Delhi Metro, says he was given the job of restoring the Pamban bridge after the storm. It describes the work as a three-month job and says it was completed in 46 days. DT Next and Down To Earth both say the bridge was repaired and normal operations restored within 45 days.

Why the old bridge closed in 2022

IIT Madras fitted monitoring equipment on the old bridge, and in 2022 it detected excessive vibration when trains crossed, DT Next reported. Rail traffic stopped on 23 December 2022, after the bridge was declared non-operational for safety, according to Incredible India. Trains terminated at Mandapam and passengers took the road bridge. DT Next and Down To Earth both name corrosion, and the Madurai divisional railway manager called the old bridge dilapidated and unfit for transport, ETV Bharat reported.

The replacement had been sanctioned earlier. PIB says the Government of India approved it in 2019, and the Ministry of Railways names RVNL as the builder.

How the lift span was put in place

PIB’s Ministry of Railways explainer says the site ruled out the usual ways of launching a lift span: there were few places to support it, shallow water near the shore, ship and fishing traffic, and strong currents. The builders instead pushed the span girder from pier to pier by an auto-launching method designed by Suntech Construction Engineering Consultants and verified by IIT Madras. The launch ran in 90 sequences, with each pier taking two to three days.

The towers were made in 28 segments and floated out on barges. A lintel (a crossbeam) joins them, forming a machine room of 21.30 by 6.80 by 4.50 metres that holds the lifting system and weighs about 100 tonnes, with 315-tonne counterweights at each end. Welds were checked by phased array ultrasonic testing. PIB says the work, which included more than 1,400 tons of fabrication, the lift span, 99 girders, and track and electrification at sea, finished without a single injury. The drive to wire the network is covered in our piece on railway electrification.

The Commissioner of Railway Safety, Southern Circle, inspected the bridge on 13 and 14 November 2024, DT Next reported. His checks covered the functioning, locking and centering of the lift span. ETV Bharat reported a test run from Mandapam to Rameswaram that took 15 minutes.

How it runs, and where it stops

RVNL’s director (operations) said the lift span stays seated all the time and rises only when ships need to pass. He said the bridge is designed for a wind speed of 230 kmph and for considerable seismic loading, and that RVNL took further measures because cyclones were among the design’s hardest problems. Down To Earth reports that the span can be raised in five minutes, that trains can run on the bridge at up to 75 km/h, and that the lift cannot operate when the wind reaches 58 km/h, which it says is common between October and February.

PIB’s year-end review for Indian Railways lists the bridge among 2025’s landmark projects, beside the Chenab Bridge on the Kashmir rail link. The review says the bridge restores the rail link to Rameswaram and revives prospects of future transport links across the Palk Strait to Sri Lanka.

Where the published numbers differ, and what is left of the old bridge

Two PIB releases give the length as 2.07 km and 2.08 km. PIB gives the cost as over Rs 700 crore. DT Next reported Rs 535 crore in November 2024 and Rs 445 crore in January 2026, and ETV Bharat reported Rs 550 crore. The span that lifts is 72.5 metres in PIB and ETV Bharat, and 63 metres in the DT Next and Down To Earth reports. Down To Earth also dates the old bridge’s opening to 25 February, a day after Scroll and Incredible India.

RVNL is dismantling the old bridge, DT Next reported on 23 January 2026. The central lift span is budgeted at Rs 2.81 crore and about four months, and it will not open for boats while the work lasts. In November 2024 the Madurai divisional railway manager said a decision on making the old bridge a national monument was pending. On 24 July 2026, Deccan Herald reported that residents were urging its preservation as the dismantling went on.