Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

AN INTERESTING BRIDGE-BUILDING FEAT. BY A. STEWART BUCKLE, Executive Engineer in Charge of the Sittang Bridge, Burma. A short account of a novel method of transporting two bridge spans from the shore to their positions in the bridge. Fig. 1.—THE STAGING ON SHORE, ON WHICH THE FLOATED SPANS WERE BUILT. NE of the most recent extensions of the Bur- ma railways system is that from Pegu to Moulmein. This line, which is 121 miles in length, was begun in October 1904, and was opened for traffic in September 1907. It proved a success from the first, the trains being always crammed with passengers, and the goods traffic also showing a corre- sponding development. In an ordinary country this railway would probably have been put in hand many years earlier, but, running as it does so near the sea-coast, the extent of heavy bridging required for a great part of its length was considerable. Whatever rivers there were had to be crossed consequently at their widest part. The most of the Gulf of near their mouths, and formidable of these rivers is the Sittang, the mouth Martaban. The width of the river at the crossing-place is about 1,600 feet, or about twice that of the Thames at London Bridge; the depth, even at lowest water-level, is as much as 24 feet. A bridge of eleven spans of 150 feet each on double cast-iron cylinders to cross the river, the total length of the bridge being 1,760 feet. An old of which forms the head The River Sittang. was designed Burman of Sittang declared that to put a bridge over the river was quite impossible ; but on being told how the same distance was covered by the Forth Bridge in one span, he agreed that it might possibly be done, but that everything depended upon whether the spirits that inhabited a large banyan tree on the river bank should be propitious or not. A railway construction engineer in India generally has a following of skilled men of various types of natives from various parts of India. It is only necessary for one or two men to learn, either from the friends of the engineer or in some other way of their own, (1,408) 90 VOL. II.