3-011-513 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Viaduct over the Taptee, near Surat, for the Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway, 1862. 'This line, one of the most important of our Indian railways...is destined to carry to Bombay the produce of the teeming cotton-plains from which our finest Indian staple is procured...By employing Mitchell's hollow cast-iron piles...[the company's consulting engineer, Colonel Pitt Kennedy] at once overcame the most serious difficulty...Three of these piers of piles...having been firmly screwed home into the clay or shale...were filled with concrete, and formed the main supporting columns of the bridge, while strut or sloping piles...served...to resist the action of the fierce monsoon currents, and fend off the whirling masses of timber and loose trees so frequently torn up and carried down by the swollen torrents...This whole system of piles...form a firm, rigid pier, on which is supported the light lattice superstructure known as Warrenne's patent girder...The regularity and uniformity of all its parts enabled the natives (who are not quick at learning new methods), after a few trials, to become wonderfully expert, and attain a speed of construction almost marvellous. The entire structure over the Taptee...was put together in eight months'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.