L and T equipment for rail project flagged off

The full-span launch equipment, said to be the first of its kind straddle carriers and girder transporters, would transport and erect girders as a single piece for the 508-km-long Mumbai-Ahmedabad rail corridor, according to a press statement issued on Thursday.

The 40-metre-long girders, weighing 975 metric tonne, would be the heaviest box girders to be pre-cast and erected in the construction industry, the statement said.

Officials of the company said there was the need to adopt state-of-the-art construction technique and methodologies considering the enormous scale of construction involved in the rail corridor, of which Larsen and Toubro holds 63 per cent share.

CEO of the company S N Subrahmanyan said, ''This is a true reflection of our alignment to the spirit of building an Atmanirbhar Bharat. Both these equipment have been entirely designed, developed in-house and customised to the specific requirements of the high-speed rail project.'' Whole-time director and senior executive vice- president (civil infrastructure) of the company S V Desai said, ''Although such equipment are readily available in several global markets, we felt it will be strategically beneficial to build it indigenously in partnership with MSMEs and make India self-reliant.''