Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 6 2025 inaugurated India’s first vertical lift railway sea bridge, situated just around 16 km from neughbouring Country Sri Lanka. It has come up nearly a century after the original Pamban Bridge was built across the Palk Strait in Rameswaram. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also Flagged off a new train – Rameshwaram- Tambaram Express- that will run between Chennai and Rameshwaram daily using the new bridge. The new Pamban Bridge in Rameshwaram is 2.08 km long built parallel to the existing old bridge. It Has 100 spans across the sea, 99 of which are 18.3 metres in length and the remaining is 72.5 metres which can be lifted up to 17 metres to allow the passing of ships. The prime Minister described the new bridge, which is India’s First vertical lift sea bridge, as an ‘’engineering wonder’’ that ‘’brought, as an ‘’engineering wonder’’ that ‘’brought together technology and tradition’’. With the competition of the bridge, a long-pending demand of the people had been fulfilled, he said. ‘’The Pamban rail bridge will support both ease of Business and ease of travel. It will have positive effects on the lives of lakhs’’.
In 1911 Dhanushkodi (India), and Talaimannar(Sri lanka) was connected by the flourishing trade between India and Srilanka which was British Engineers ambitious project to connect the mainland to Rameswaram. As result it opened the Scherzer Span Pamban Bridge in 1914. The structure of these bridge was a cantilever with a Scherzer rolling lift span which allow the ships to pass underneath.