Crimea Bridge: construction of railway spans over Kerch Strait water area begins (photo)

Construction of Crimea Bridge’s railway spans over the water area of the Kerch Strait has begun at the section between the Tuzla island and the fairway of the Kerch-Yenikalsky Canal. According to the Crimean Bridge information center, that bridge deck of over 2 km will be connected with the arch.

Incremental launching technology is applied for installation of the bridge spans above the water. Unitized structures assembled on the Tuzla island are slided one by one to the support structures with the speed of about 45 mm per minute. The same technology was used when building the highway section of the Crimea Bridge. 

The railway span of the Crimea Bridge is a structure weighing 580 t and numbering more than 40 key elements connected by welding and bolted. The assembled structure is more than 5 meters high and more than 15 meters wide. The spans are placed on support structures the distance between which does not exceed 65 m.

According to Yury Beskov, technical manager of SGM-Most, each support structure is about half a meter higher than the previous one. From 5 meters on the Tuzla island they grow to almost 17 meters at the water section and up to 35 meters at the fairway of the Kerch-Yenikalsky canal. 

In 2018, railway spans of the bridge will be built simultaneously at all sea sections. More than 6 km of railway bridge units will be placed on 64 support structures. Total weight of railway spans placed above water will exceed 60,000 t.

The railway is being constructed simultaneously with the highway. By the end of January 2018, more than 180 of 307 railway support structures are ready, more than 39,000 t of 160,000 t of span structures have been assembled. Parallel to the works in the Kerch Strait, railway infrastructure is being developed on both shores of the strait. These are railways running from the Krasnodar Territory and the Crimea for 40 and 17.5 km accordingly. Railway approaches will be put into operation simultaneously with the commissioning of the Crimea Bridge’s railway part, in 2019. The highway part of the bridge will be put into operation in December 2018.