Lansdowne Bridge | |
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Lansdowne Bridge
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Carries | Vehicles |
Crosses | River Indus |
Locale | Sukkur |
Official name | Lansdowne Bridge |
Characteristics | |
Design | Cantilever truss |
Material | Iron - Steel |
Longest span | 790 feet |
History | |
Designer | Alexander Meadows Rendel |
Construction start | 1887 |
Construction end | 1889 |
The Lansdowne Bridge Rohri at Sukkur (Sindhi لينسڊائون پل روهڙي) (Urdu: لینس ڈاؤن پل روہڑی ) is a bridge over the Indus River between Sukkur city and Rohri town of Sindh, Pakistan. Any visitor to Sukkur-Rohri Pakistan is usually awe struck by the largest man made monuments in the area. They are two in number. One is the over one century old Lansdowne Bridge and the other is the Ayub Bridge.
A marvel of 19th-century engineering, the 'longest 'rigid' girder bridge in the world' at that time, it was begun in 1887. It was designed by Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel; he designed the Lansdowne Bridge Rohri at Sukkur over the Indus River, which when it was completed in 1889 was the largest cantilever bridge in the world. The girder work, weighing a massive 3,300 tons, was manufactured in London by the firm of Westwood, Baillie and erected by F.E. Robertson, and Hecquet.
Indus was bridged at Attock in 1887 and that allowed Railways in India to run from the Western most post of Khyber Pass to the eastern city of Calcutta.
India’s rail link to the port of Karachi was however, still broken at the Indus flowing between the towns of Rohri and Sukkur. Indus was not bridged between Kotri and Hyderabad either therefore trains ran on Karachi-Jamshoro-Larkana-Sukkur route as early as 1879 and then they were ferried across to Rohri and vice versa on a river ferry.