Sumidagawa bridge, Railway bridge across Sumida River in Mukojima and Hanakawado, Japan.
Sumidagawa Bridge is a 166-metre steel truss railway bridge over the Sumida River, linking Hanakawado in Taitō to Mukojima in Sumida. It has three spans of 51, 64 and 51 metres, a double-track deck carrying the Tōbu Isesaki (Skytree) Line, and a concrete substructure. A walkway, the Sumida River Walk, runs mostly along its downstream side.
Tobu built the bridge to extend its Isesaki Line to Asakusa Station. Work began in 1927 and the bridge opened on 25 May 1931, designed by Yutaka Tanaka with steelwork by Yokogawa Bridge Works. From 1931 to 1943 Sumida Park Station stood just east of it. After the war, an occupying officer reportedly admired Tanaka's drawings and took them away.
The bridge is nicknamed Hanakawado Railway Bridge after the Hanakawado district on its west bank. Since 28 March 2018 it has been lit at night for tourists, and from the west bank the illumination lines up with the Tokyo Skytree. In 2020 the steel was repainted in Sky Tree White, the same tone as the tower.
The Sumida River Walk, a pedestrian path attached mostly to the bridge's south side, opened on 18 June 2020 and is free, open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.; bicycles must be pushed. Trains cross the bridge at a 15 km/h speed limit because of the sharp curve into Asakusa Station. The bridge is between Asakusa Station on the Tobu Skytree Line and Tokyo Skytree Town.
The bridge carries a double-track section where a crossover sits directly on the structure, unusual because points on bridges are normally avoided: maintenance is dangerous and derailments there are hard to recover from. It exists only because the elevated approach to Asakusa is too curved and too short for one elsewhere. Trains slow to 15 km/h here.
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