After being in the making for decades, the Chenab Rail Bridge in Jammu & Kashmir, India, was finally inaugurated in June 2025, tells a New York Times story: An Engineering Marvel, Decades in the Making: A Rail Line to Kashmir. This bridge is part of the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL), vital for connecting Kashmir with India’s rail grid. The bridge spans 1,315 m in total and features a single steel arch span of 467 m. It is both the highest railway bridge and the highest arch bridge in the world. Its deck stands approximately 359 m (1,178 ft) above the Chenab River, surpassing the Najiehe Bridge in China. It is 35 m taller than the Eiffel Tower. It’s not just the height—its sheer scale, engineering resilience, and strategic importance make it a marvel of modern rail bridge construction.
The bridge can withstand winds up to 266 km/h (165 mph). An automatic braking system halts trains if wind speeds cross safety thresholds. Wind tunnel tests were conducted in Denmark to model the effects of strong gusts on the bridge’s arch and deck. The bridge can endure earthquakes up to magnitude 8, very critical for the Himalayas, all of it a giant earthquake zone. The foundations are built on stable strata with massive anchoring systems to absorb tremors. It can survive explosions up to 40 tons of TNT equivalent, critical for a region embroiled in armed conflict.
Because this region is full of geographical, climatic, and strategic challenges, the Chenab Rail Bridge project adopted a design-as-you -go attitude simultaneously planning, modeling and constructing the bridge. Site data was continuously gathered using drones, LiDAR, and geotechnical boring and fed into live BIM models. Engineers used software such as Trimble’s Tekla Structures, STAAD.Pro, MIDAS and AutoCAD.