September 28 a new rail bridge over the Kola River in Murmansk Oblast replacing the one that collapsed in June. The construction of the new bridge took just 105 days.
Unlike the old bridge, the new one has no pillars in the river bed, all the support structures are shore-based. This means the bridge will not affect fish migration and will not be affected by floods, which was the reason of the destruction of the old bridge.
The bridge consists of three spans, the central one measuring 111.2 meters and the side ones 18.2 meters each. The full length of the bridge is 158.2 meters.
The bridge will be equipped with a monitoring system that will alert on possible flaws in the bridge structure in real time and automatically suspending traffic across the bridge. This will be the first system of the kind to be implemented on rail bridges in Russia.
The first train that passed the bridge after it was inaugurated was a freight one.