The railway section of the Crimean Bridge is almost complete. The piles for the multiton structure have been installed and some rails have been laid. Next year, up to 500 trains will be able to cross the Kerch Strait Bridge every day.
Here's Artyom Kol with a report on the new phase of the grandiose construction.
Pile #254 of the railway section of the Crimean Bridge was the last one to install. At the altitude of a 12-story building, or 108 feet above sea level, the construction workers have begun to fill the structure with concrete. There's a floating concrete plant next to the pile. By use of this complicated method, the team has already installed almost 600 piles of the Crimean Bridge. Half of them belong to the railway section.
Leonid Ryzhenkin, Deputy General Director for Infrastructure Projects at Stroygazmontazh: “The team has completed the construction of the railway bridge piles ahead of schedule. These piles are quite massive. The piles for the rail and road bridges differ in size. The piles have been driven to almost 300 ft beneath the water surface. Each pile foundation is reinforced with 15 tubular piles, which are installed at various angles to protect the structure from earthquakes and inclement weather conditions.”
"Move it to the right".
While working on the piles, the team began to lay spans on top of them. This process is called a float-over installation. The hardest part takes place above the sea.
Arkady Rotenberg, Chairman of the Board of Directors at Stroygazmontazh: "It's a very complicated structure. The parts are put on top one another like construction blocks and are carefully aligned".
The team is to install a total of 160 tons of metal blocks. Almost 9 miles of spans have been installed so far. The rail laying process has begun at the Taman Peninsula: 5.5 miles of rails have been laid. The project is moving on schedule and should be completed in a year when the bridge will be open to train traffic. Passenger trains will run at a speed of 75 miles per hour and cargo trains will be limited to the speed of 50 miles per hour. The capacity of the Crimean Bridge will be 50 pairs of trains with the weight of over 7,000 tons per day.
Artyom Kol, Andrey Terentiev, Nikita Kalchenko, Vesti, Crimea.
