CR to preserve stone plaques found during Carnac razing

MUMBAI: Central Railway plans to preserve the six stone plaques found during the demolition of the 150-year-old Carnac bunder Bridge on Sunday at the heritage museum. This stone bridge located between Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Masjid Bunder station is in its last leg of demolition.

A 27-hour mega block will be conducted on Saturday night from 11pm onwards to demolish the structure. CR will also use this block to also conduct other asset maintenance work.

“The heritage bridge has six stone plaques with the inscription and year of construction. It will be preserved either at heritage lane or museum area within the CR,” said an officer from CR.

These stone plaques have the year of construction 1868 and the name of the bridge inscribed in three different languages. The plaque has an anchor shaped carving and all inscriptions are in Hindi, Gujarati and English on all four sides of the plaques.

Moreover, a shadow block during the same period will be conducted wherein maintenance work between CSMT and

Byculla stations on CR and CSMT and Wadala station on Harbour line have been planned.

“We will conduct track renewal, signal maintenance, overhead equipment maintenance and other cleanliness work to utilize the block margin,” said Shivaji Sutar, chief public relations officer, CR.

As part of the demolition preparations, CR has deployed four cranes that include three cranes of 350 tonnes and one crane of 500 tonnes. Four hydra cranes for shifting material have also been deployed in the presence of 400 manpower including 35 officers and 100 supervisors. There will be 50 gas cutters with the helpers in each shift along with 300 gas cylinders.

“In the last three months, around 300 trucks worth concrete have been removed from the bridge approaches. The mega block over the weekend will focus on removing steel structure of approximately 450 tonnes, 50 metres in length and 18.8 metres in width,” added Sutar.

Arrangements for sufficient lights during night time demolition have been arranged at the location. Demolition of the bridge began on September 2.

HT PHOTO The plaque has an anchor shaped carving and all inscriptions are in Hindi, Gujarati and English