A 322-meter-long railway bridge over the Vetluga River has been commissioned in Nizhny Novgorod Region. The reconstruction of the bridge located at the 570th kilometer of the odd-numbered track of the Nizhny Novgorod – Shakhunya section was carried out by the builders of the SK MOST Group of Companies.
The bridge over the Vetluga River was built in 1926 when the Gorky – Kotelnich Railway Line was built. It has been in service for almost 90 years and needed to be upgraded. The bridge reconstruction operations started in late 2010. The builders repaired the above-water parts of the pillars, consolidated the cone slopes and the river bank at the bridge abutments, and replaced all four span decks (two that are 34 meters long and two that are 126 meters long). The final phase of the operations included track installation, installation of the signaling system, and rearrangement of the contact network.
The repaired bridge was then put in trial service for three months after the operations had been completed. At the end of this period, the railway administration appreciated high reliability of the new steel structures of the bridge. The Ministerial Commission of OJSC RZD, the Customer, officially accepted the installation for service on September 13.
“I am pleased to note that we are commissioning the new bridge that will be able to carry heavy loads just before the anniversary of the company. It will sustain trains of up to 130 cars long weighing up to nine thousand metric tons”,
– said Anatoly Lesun, Director of the Gorky Railway.
