page_title: Koilwar Bridge
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Koilwar Bridge / History
caption_attribution_description: This is a scan of a page of the 1851 notebook of George Turnbull (civil engineer), the Chief Engineer planning and building the first railway from Calcutta (now Kolkata) some 600 miles up the Ganges River towards Delhi. One of the greatest challenges was the construction of a bridge over the mile-wide largest tributary of the Ganges, the Son River: this river has massive flooding each monsoon. Turnbull was the first person to survey the river, decide on a suitable site, order the steel structures to be delivered from England,and organise the construction of this vital 1850s rail+road bridge that still is used in 2015!! The notebook is held in the South Asia library of Cambridge University, England with some of Turnbull's diaries.
context_page_description: The Koilwar Bridge, also named as Abdul Bari Bridge, at Koilwar spans the River Sone. The bridge was named after Professor Abdul Bari, academic and social reformer. This is the oldest railway bridge of India standing still for 156 years & running.
  The steel lattice girder Koilwar Bridge was the longest bridge in the subcontinent when built: construction started in 1856, disrupted by uprisings in 1857, and completed in 1862. A two-lane road runs under the twin rail tracks.
  India railway old bridge koilwar bridge Ara bihar
  The bridge was inaugurated by the Viceroy Lord Elgin, who said, "... this magnificent bridge is exceeded in magnitude by only one bridge in the world". The bridge was designed by James Meadows Rendel and Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. It remained the longest bridge in the Indian subcontinent till it was overtaken by the Upper Sone Bridge in 1900.
  The bridge is shown in the 1982 film Gandhi, directed by Richard Attenborough.
context_section_description: An initial survey of the bridge site was made on 17 February 1851 by George Turnbull, Chief Engineer of the East Indian Railway Company: he determined that the river then was 5,350 feet (1,630 m) feet across — the completed bridge was 5,280 feet (1,610 m) feet across. He settled on the site near Pures "where the banks are well defined, and the channel had evidently for ages been confined within certain limits, proved by the existence of old Hindoo temples, far before the Mohammaden works at Muneer, built about 200 years [before 1851]."
  By November 1859, both abutments and 16 of the 26 piers were being built and the well-sinking for the remaining piers progressing. By 21 December 1860, three of the iron spans were in place; 4572 tons of the estimated 5683 final tons of iron-work for the bridge had arrived from England.
  George Turnbull inspected the bridge and judged it complete on 4 November 1862. On 11, 12 and 13 December 1862,  "a set of experiments with couple engines, testing the Keeul, Hullohur and Soane bridges, with an assembly of Government engineers, and our railing engineers; all very satisfactory."  On 5 February 1863, a special train from Howrah took Turnbull, the Viceroy Lord Elgin, Lt Governor Sir Cecil Beadon and others over two days to Benares: they alighted at the bridge and inspected it. In Benares there was a durbar on 7 February to celebrate the building of the railway and particularly the bridging of the Sone, the largest tributary of the Ganges.
  Sand erosion near the pillars of this old bridge has created structural problems recently.
caption: A page from George Turnbull's 1851 notebook detailing his determining the approximate width of the mile-wide Sone River at the point where he decided that the bridge should be built.[4]
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