On Wednesday, August 28, at a military training ground near Yaroslavl, tests of the new Russian railway bridge-overpass IMZH-500, which should enter service with the Russian army in 2014, took place. State tests of prototypes of property and special equipment of the railway troops took place at the test site. For these purposes, a new special equipment was presented on the Norskoye Peninsula, which is intended for the construction and repair of railway lines both on land and on water.
According to the press service and information department of the Russian Ministry of Defense, as part of the demonstration of engineering equipment near Yaroslavl, a special tactical exercise was held with a pontoon-bridge railway battalion from a separate railway brigade of the Western Military District. During the exercise, an inflow railway bridge was built across the Volga. And the culmination of the exercise-testing of the half-kilometer-long IMZH-500 overpass bridge, thrown across the Volga, was the passage of a military echelon with various military equipment, as well as the passage of tank and automobile convoys under the influence of sabotage groups and the air of a conditional enemy.
The main experimental object and the real "highlight" of the test program was the modern bridge-flyover IMZH-500, which was installed at a height of 8 meters. The collapsible bridge structure was designed by Moscow specialists, and all the necessary structural elements, which so far exist only in a single copy, were manufactured in Bryansk at the 192nd Central Railway Engineering Plant. According to Sergei Solovyov, who is the chief engineer of the railway troops of the RF Ministry of Defense, military railroad workers began work on a fundamentally new pre-fabricated structure of the bridge back in 2009. By 2013, their works reached the stage of state tests.
Sergei Soloviev told reporters that the old version of the bridge, which was designed back in 1960-70s, had the designation REM-500. At present, this development no longer corresponds to the level of modern loads, only trains can move along it, while this bridge is impassable for wheeled and tracked vehicles. At the same time, the new design of the IMZH-500 is completely devoid of these disadvantages. Both military echelons and armored vehicles and cars can safely move along the new bridge-overpass. According to Solovyov, all samples of Russian equipment that are in service today can be transferred to the specified area over the new bridge.
Moreover, such a transfer of military equipment can occur at a fairly high speed. For example, train trains can travel on this bridge at speeds up to 50 km / h, a tank can reach speeds of up to 60 km / h. In just one day, this bridge is able to pass more than 40 60-car trains with various military equipment and troops (weighing up to 4 thousand tons), as well as more than 5 thousand trucks and up to 2, 5 thousand tanks and other tracked vehicles. A significant advantage of the new army bridge crossing is the fact that the maximum height of its metal supports is 14 meters.
Sergei Soloviev noted that the modern bridge-overpass IMZH-500 will go into service with the Russian bridge railway battalions and will be used on the technical cover of railways. IMZh-500 is designed for quick organization of bridge crossings in various hydrogeological conditions. An experimental prototype of this bridge should soon complete a set of state tests and examinations. These bridges will appear in the state defense order as early as next year. There is nothing strange in this, considering that the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the RF Armed Forces had previously set the task so that by 2020 in all types of the Armed Forces, including in the railway troops, the share of supplied modern equipment would reach 70%.
Judging by the statements of representatives of the armed forces of Ukraine and Belarus present at the exercises and tests of the new bridge, these two states are also ready to replace the outdated REM-500 with new Russian designs. "Good speed characteristics, good increased load, the ability to cross the bridge of tanks and cars …" - listed the main advantages of IMZH-500 Alexander Tsekhovsky, who is the head of the State Transport Service of Ukraine. According to him, the Ukrainian armed forces are also interested in acquiring such engineering structures and modernizing their own railway units.
