Betar

New Railway Bridge over Shire River

• Location: Balaka district, Malawi
• Solution: Bridges, Infrastructure and Transport
• Type: Railway bridges, Management and construction inspection, Roadways and railways, Management and construction inspection
• Promoter: Central East African Railways - CEAR
• Client: Central East African Railways - CEAR
• Scope: Structural and railway track design, Inspection of exsiting structures, Studies of Geotechnics, Drainage, Flood Protection and Hydrology, onsite supervision of works of rail track and strucutres
• Area: 1 031m2 de tabuleiro
• Project: 2017/2018
• Construction: 2018/2021
• Photography: Mota-Engil Africa
• Contractor: Mota-Engil Africa
• Dimension: 165m long, 65m max span
• Ver no Google Maps

The new railway bridge over Shire River is located on the Limbe/Mchinji railway line that establishes the link between Limbe and the West border with Zambia.

The existing bridge was a 3D frame truss that due to buckling of the chords, collisions, foundations’ differential settlements and general corrosion lost its structural bearing capacity. The structural assessment results and overall rehabilitation costs sentenced that the old structure was unrecoverable.

Furthermore, the bridge condition couldn’t achieve the global objective of modernization of the railways up to 21 ton/axes trains.

The new crossing with 165m long is divided in to 3 spans of 50m + 65m + 50m.

The deck is a composite steel-concrete solution with two girders that was constructed by the incremental launching method from the Northern bank. The precast slab panels were connected by studs and in situ concreting to the steel girders.

The project also included the design of 1000m of railways linking the new bridge to the existing line and the redesign of the Shire North Station’s quay where the railway line turns to double before entering the rail station.