Army sets up part of Elphinstone Road FOB, construction to be complete in 2 weeks

Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road FOB will be equipped with a roof and a fabricated staircase

Bombay Sappers — a wing of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers constructing foot overbridges (FOBs) at Elphinstone Road, Currey Road and Ambivli railway stations — set up part of the Elphinstone Road station FOB on Saturday.

The Indian Army’s Bombay Sappers undertaking work on the Elphinstone Road foot overbridge on Saturday. (Pratik Chorge/HT Photo)

The sappers have started replacing the girders on top of the pillars with ‘Bailey bridges’, which were brought to the city from Doklam, a territory near the Indo-China border, on January 6.These bridges will be used at the Currey Road and Ambivli railway stations too.

The construction of the Elphinstone Road FOB is in its fourth stage — the setting up of the Bailey bridge — following which the bridge will be commissioned. Construction on the Rs5-crore FOB is expected to be completed within two weeks.

It will be equipped with a roof and a fabricated staircase. The Army plans to complete the work on the nights between January 27 and 29, so suburban train services are not affected much.

“We had a 60-day deadline to complete work on the FOB and we will stick to it. The Bailey bridge is used in border roads. The design of the FOB had to be changed, owing to a project that the Railways plans to undertake. The second design was much more intricate and hence, took more time to complete,”said Brigadier Dhiraj Mohan of the Bombay Sappers.

Construction of FoBs at the three stations will collectively cost Rs13 crore. While the Army plans to complete work on the Ambivli FOB by January 31, it plans to set up the Currey Road FOB by February 4, after which the rest of the construction will take 20 days.

Mohan said communication proved to be a challenge during construction work.“The initial challenge was communication between Railways and the Army. It also took time to figure out also how military equipment could be adapted for public use,” added Mohan.

Bailey bridges, which have been used for construction since World War II, are made of high carbon steel. They are portable and have a carrying capacity of 8 tonnes. The 12-foot-wide bridges are too narrow for Army tanks, but wide enough for every other type of vehicle. The Army sets up such bridges during emergencies and natural calamities.