A video showing a train crossing a high-altitude bridge over a river is viral on social media with the claim that it shows a trial run on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link on the Chenab river in Jammu and Kashmir.
BOOM found these claims to be false; we found that the video shows a train crossing the Shuibai Railway Bridge over the Beipan River in China's Guizhou Province.
According to an ANI report, a small train passed through the "railway track under construction on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link on the Chenab valley in Jammu and Kashmir". This has been dubbed by reports as the highest railway bridge in the world. The video is being shared against this backdrop.
Twitter user Kabla Singh, who describes himself as a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party's Jammu and Kashmir unit, shared the video on Twitter with the caption, "Successful small train test run was conducted on 21 March on world's highest railway track under construction on Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link on Chenab river in J&K."
We also found several other posts containing the exact caption and video on Twitter.
The video was also widely shared with the same claim on Facebook. Such posts can be viewed here, here, and here.
Fact Check
BOOM searched for information on the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla rail link using keyword searches, and came across a few reports and tweets about the progress on the construction of the bridge.
According to Union Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw, track laying work on the bridge started around mid-February.
Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State of Science and Technology, tweeted on March 25, 2023, that the bridge "will soon witness trains passing through it". The photo shared by Singh showed ongoing work on the railway tracks.
This suggests that the Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla railway bridge on the Chenab valley is still in its early stages, and is yet to be operation. In contrast, the bridge seen in the viral video appears to be completely operational.
Furthermore, according to the latest report by ANI on the Chenab valley railway bridge, a small train was passed across the bridge as a trail run on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.
However, the train seen passing across the bridge in the viral video was not small - it was a relatively large train with nine coaches and an engine.
Furthermore, we found images of the Chenab Bridge, uploaded by the Twitter account of Northern Railway on March 26, 2023. While the arch of the bridge in the viral video is red in colour, the arch of the bridge seen in the photos shared by the Northern Railway is dark green.
Geolocating The Bridge In Viral Video
We did a keyword search with "highest railway bridges", and came across an article by Indiatimes titled, "Engineering Marvels: The Tallest Railway Bridges From Across The World".
Looking through the list (which also included the Chenab river bridge), we found a photo of a railway bridge which closely matched the one seen in the viral video. It was labeled in the article as the Beipan River Bridge.
Taking cue from this, we did a further enquiry into this bridge, and found that it was the Beipan River Shuibai Railway Bridge in China's Guizhou Province, which - at its time of operation launch - held the record for being the highest arch bridge in the world.
We found more details on the Beipan River Bridge on the website Highest Bridges, which also contained several photos of this bridge.
While all the images of the Beipan River Bridge was an exact match with the one on the viral video, we decided to do a comparison of the terrain seen in one of the images on Highest Bridges, with that of the viral video, for further confirmation.
The comparison, as seen above, led us to conclude that the viral video did indeed show the Beipan River Bridge.
We also compared the bridge in the viral video with the Chenab Bridge and the Beipan River Bridge in the following image, which further confirmed that it does not show the former.
We also found several videos of the Beipan River Bridge on Chinese social media website Bilibili, and found that the bridge and the terrain matched the one seen in the viral video.
You can find such videos here, here and here.
Doordarshan National also posted a feature on the Chenab Bridge Facebook page on January 16, 2020, where it mentioned that once operational it will be the highest rail bridge in the world, at an altitude of 359m above the Chenab river bed.
It also mentioned, that at the time of posting the video, the highest rail bridge was the Beipan river bridge, at an altitude of 275m. It also included an image of the Beipan river bridge, which was an exact match with the bridge seen in the viral video.
