Desi steel for Howrah Bridge

• When Howrah bridge was built in the late 1930s, nearly 90 per cent of its steel was made in India.

• When Vidyasagar Setu was built in the 1980s, all the steel was imported.

• The 705m-long Howrah bridge was built in 41 months. The 823m-long Vidyasagar Setu took 14 years to be built.

Calcutta:

These and more such nuggets of information about the two bridges across the Hooghly were shared at the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday during a lecture on the completion of the Howrah bridge’s 75 years.

Amitabha Ghosal, an engineer who was part of the team that built Vidyasagar Setu, spoke about the history of the Howrah bridge and its engineering.

Ghosal began by saying why the Howrah bridge was built. Traffic to and from Howrah station had been slowly but gradually on the rise. A pontoon bridge that stood over the Hooghly and connected Calcutta and Howrah had to be lifted whenever a large ship came under it.

“River traffic was then more important than road traffic, which was however increasing. So a need was felt to build a bridge,” said Ghosal, who studied the design, construction and tendering of the Howrah bridge while working on Vidyasagar Setu.

There had been talk about building a bridge since 1900 but the actual planning didn’t begin till 1921. World War I was one of the reasons for the delay.

The pontoon bridge was commissioned in 1874 for 25 years, but remained in use till 1943, when the Howrah bridge was commissioned. Construction began in November 1938 and carried on till March 1942.

Four companies from England, Scotland, Germany and India had placed bids in a global tender floated for the construction of the Howrah bridge. The German company was rejected because World War II was brewing.

Cleveland Bridge of England won the bid but British-owned Indian company opposed it. “It was a tiff between the British in India and the British in England. The British in India managed to convince the authorities that the entire work cannot be given to an England-based company,” said Ghosal.

A compromise was worked out. The Indian company – BBJ Construction Company Limited, a consortium of Braithwaite, Burn and Jessop – was asked to make the steel. Most of the steel – 23,500 tonnes out of 26,500 tonnes – was manufactured and supplied by Tata Iron and Steel Company (Tisco), now Tata Steel.

The foundation of the bridge was built by the Indian-owned Hindustan Construction Company, which is now building the Parama flyover in Calcutta.

source: http://www.telegraphindia.com / The Telegraph,Calcutta,India / Home> Calcutta / by Subhajoy Roy / May 03rd, 2018