With new Pamban Bridge open, all 14 trains to reach Rameswaram station

With the redevelopment of the Rameswaram station under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme and the opening of the new Pamban Bridge, the government is aiming for a major economic boost in the island as it is a prominent pilgrimage destination and key tourist hub.

There are six daily trains to Rameswaram—two mail/express trains from Chennai Egmore, three passenger trains from Madurai and one mail/express from Tiruchirappalli. Apart from this, two triweekly trains—one each from Tirupati and Kanniyakumari—and six weekly trains—one each from Ayodhya, Coimbatore, Okha, Varanasi, Firozpur and Bhubaneswar—will also reach the Rameswaram station.

Officials said that while there were already two trains connecting Mandapam and Chennai, the new train, the Rameswaram-Tambaram Express, has four stops that the earlier trains did not have—Tiruvarur, Thiruthuraipoondi, Pattukottai and Aranthangi.

While waiting for a train to Ayodhya at the Mandapam station, Suresh Nath Shukla, 72, said that Pamban Bridge is a great help for people like him as it will reduce the cost and time.

“We came here with three members of my family. We had to deboard the train at Mandapam and take a private vehicle to go to Rameswaram. It cost over a thousand rupees for both ways. I am happy that this new bridge has come up. It will save a lot of money and pilgrims will reach easily,” said Shukla, as Kashi Ben, a pilgrim from Solapur in Maharashtra, nodded in agreement.

Some of the popular trains connecting Rameswaram to major cities are the Chennai Egmore-Rameswaram Express, Secunderabad-Rameswaram Express, Bhubaneswar-Rameswaram Express, Ayodhya-Rameswaram Shraddha Sethu Express and Benaras-Rameswaram Express.

The government is converting the Rameswaram station into a big city centre. The structural works of the north-side terminal building and electric substation and the construction of a parcel office have been completed and the construction of the east-side terminal building and an arrival forecourt as well as platform improvement is underway.

The new 2.08-km Pamban Bridge was built parallel to the old bridge at a cost of over Rs 700 crore. It has 100 spans, 99 of which are of 18.3 m length and one is 72.5 m long and can be lifted up to 17 m to allow the passing of ships.

The construction of the new bridge was conceived to address the limitation of the old bridge, which was India’s first sea bridge and had served over a century, and to accommodate the growing traffic volume.

In 1911, due to growing trade between India and Sri Lanka through two ports—Dhanushkodi, which is the southeastern tip of the Pamban Island and now abandoned, and Talaimannar in Sri Lanka—British engineers embarked on an ambitious project to connect the mainland to Rameswaram, culminating the opening of the Scherzer Span Pamban Bridge in 1914.

The bridge was a cantilever structure with a Scherzer rolling lift span, allowing the ships to pass underneath. However, after 100 years of its service in the second most corrosive zone in the world, it became very challenging to prevent the bridge from corrosion.

The Railways therefore decided to build a new bridge on the line, for which Modi laid the foundation stone on March 1, 2019. The reconstruction of the Pamban Bridge was sanctioned under supplementary demands for grants on February 20, 2019. The operation of the old bridge was stopped in December 2022.

Officials said the robust protection system against corrosion can extend the bridge’s lifespan to 38 years without maintenance, and up to 58 years with minimal maintenance.