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General Information

Completion: 1921
Status: in use

Project Type

Location

Location: , ,
Coordinates: 6° 52' 36.53" N    81° 3' 39.04" E
Show coordinates on a map

Technical Information

Dimensions

width 7.62 m
height 24.38 m
total length 91.44 m
number of tracks 1
arches number of arches 9

Materials

piers stone
brick
arches stone
brick

Excerpt from Wikipedia

The Nine Arches Bridge (Sinhala: ආරුක්කු නමයේ පාලම,) also called the Bridge in the Sky, is a viaduct bridge in Sri Lanka. It is one of the best examples of colonial-era railway construction in the country.

It is located in Demodara, between Ella and Demodara railway stations. The surrounding area has seen a steady increase of tourism due to the bridge's architectural ingenuity and the profuse greenery in the nearby hillsides.

The construction of the bridge is generally attributed to a local Ceylonese builder, P. K. Appuhami, in consultation with British engineers. The chief designer and project manager of the 'upcountry railway line of Ceylon' project was D. J. Wimalasurendra, a distinguished Ceylonese engineer and inventor. The designer of the viaduct was Harold Cuthbert Marwood of Railway Construction Department of Ceylon Government Railway. The 1923 report titled "Construction of a Concrete Railway Viaduct in Ceylon" published by the Engineering Association of Ceylon has details of all the records including the plans and drawings.

Popular rumours suggest that when construction work commenced on the bridge, the Great War began between the empires of Europe and the steel assigned for this site was reallocated to Britain's War related projects at the battlefront. As a result, the work came to a standstill, leading the locals to build the bridge with stone bricks and cement, but without steel.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "Nine Arch Bridge" and modified on February 10, 2023 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.

Participants

Currently there is no information available about persons or companies having participated in this project.

Relevant Web Sites

  • About this
    data sheet
  • Structure-ID
    20085077
  • Published on:
    04/02/2023
  • Last updated on:
    06/02/2023
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