BENGALURU: The Outer Ring Road Line will register a unique first for Bengaluru Metro as the first full overhead U-girder will be launched on Friday night near its Bellandur Metro station. The girder runs to a length of 28 metres and has been cast in a yard at Gunjur.
In all projects of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) so far, the girder has been erected using cranes. “It is for the first time a launcher will be used which will lift the girder above the work site and launch it and this is being done along the Silk Board-KR Puram Line. The lift will be done once for 3 or 4 km,” said a top Metro official.
Girder is a crucial part of civil infrastructure as the viaduct, on which the rails are laid, will come up on it.
“Contractor AFCONS has readied the girder under Metro supervision. The U-girder weighs 160 tonnes. It will take us just one day to complete the work as compared to a minimum of seven days that the traditional method of casting segments and then linking them to form a girder used to take,” the official said. Two U-girders are placed on every span. “We have completed work on 13 spans so far and all the girders were brought together as segments and made into one whole at the site,” the official said. The line will have 330 spans, he added.
Line & Power Block gets nod
The Bengaluru Railway Division has permitted BMRCL to carry out work relating to launch of its open web girder between Carmelaram and Baiyappanahalli Metro stations. The delay in launch of this girder has ensured that work between K R Puram and Baiyapanahalli Metro station could not be completed on the Reach-1 Extension line with the line set to be partially launched in March.
According to a communication issued by the Senior Divisional Operations Manager of Bengaluru Railway Division on Friday, line and power block will be undertaken for 22 hours spread over a week, beginning January 29.
BMRCL will launch a 65m open web girder above the railway tracks here. Railways had initially approved a Line Block between December 8 and 31, but BMRCL was not in a position to launch the girder as preliminary work was not completed.
