After over five hours of constant action, broken only by stolen cups of chai and cigarettes, the waiting had become its own kind of weight. Eyes glazed with sleep, legs aching to sit. An occasional joke cut through the air, but the joy of finishing was still at bay. An unspoken restlessness had settled in with the dust — evident in the expectant looks, the shuffling of weary feet, the repeated glances at a sky slowly losing its dark.Everyone was watching one solitary welder, perched on a ladder, severing the last inch of the 30,000-kilogram girder. The sides had been cut free, the crane’s ropes were tied around it, holding its weight. But this last inch — thick, stubborn steel at the centre of the 37-metre girder, gluing it to the pillar — would not give.At 6am, the welder climbed down. Phones went up. Shouts of “rassa pakdo” rang out, asking workers to hold on to the ropes tied to the girder, which would control its direction when it hung midair.It needed one last push. At the east end, a worker rammed a crowbar behind the girder and tipped it over. The 30,000-kg girder swung forward.The sky — all traces of night gone — erupted in fireworks. A contractor had brought them, quietly, in anticipation of this moment. It had taken over three months to get here. And just like that, a 112-year-old relic had come down. A contractor set off fireworks as the last girder of the Elphinstone Bridge was lifted free by the 800MT crane in the early hours of April 5. (Express photo by Credit Sankhadeep Banerjee)***For over a century, the Elphinstone Bridge was less of a structure and more of a neighbourhood habit. It was the connector between the east and west of Mumbai, a city sheared along its length by railway lines. Shiny office buildings soared over it, drawn by its twin connectivity to Prabhadevi and Parel stations. Commuters kept up a steady stream down its steps, joining the queue for share-taxis under the shade of its archway. Chai and heated argument played out against the backdrop of its fort-like basalt stone walls.Story continues below this adAge, and a city’s growing need to zoom from one end to the other, meant it was destined to be history. In September 2025, the bridge was closed forever — emblematic of a change occurring all over the city, the basalt making way for concrete, the old making way for the new. It is to be replaced with a double-decker future — lower deck for local traffic, upper deck part of the Sewri-Worli Connector, a vision of Mumbai where you zip from the Coastal Road in the west to Atal Setu in the east in minutes.But before any of that could happen, the bridge had to come down. And that, it turned out, was the harder problem.*** The original 1911 engineering drawings of the Carroll Road Overbridge — as the Elphinstone Bridge was then known — which MRIDC engineers studied to plan its dismantling over a century later.The engineers who pored over the bridge’s 1911 drawings found natural divisions — two joints across its length dividing the structure into three. Two of them had seven panels each, and the third had eight. It was logical, they decided, to dismantle it in its 28 constituent parts.What they could not design away were two complications.The bridge crossed 11 railway tracks, nearly all live, with hundreds of trains through the day. Any work involving gas cutting and flying sparks had to happen when no trains were running: in the narrow three-hour corridor between the last and first train of the night, or in longer blocks that would halt a city’s lifeline. The latter would be granted sparingly.Story continues below this adThen there was the overhead electrical (OHE) wire that powers the trains. Over decades, the catenary wire had crept upward and become entangled with the bridge itself.“The overhead electrical wires of the railways are tangled up with the bridge,” said Anirudh Sharma, project manager at Maharashtra Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation (MRIDC), in the early days of dismantling. “This is because the height of the bridge is barely 5.5 metres. Over the years, the railway track has been raised, scrimping into the space of the top wire called the catenary wire to hang. So, that wire got looped in with the bridge.”Sharma found a solution on a sleepless night in October, inspired by an advertisement for a clothesline. What if a temporary beam, resting across the girders, could hold the OHE wires suspended while the panels were removed beneath? Western Railway agreed.There were a few false starts. The first night, New Year’s Eve, did not get past first gear. The night of January 3, under a rare 12-hour maintenance block, was too much too fast: the first half went in manoeuvring the crane into position, the second in a standoff with local residents. But gradually, gingerly, over January, a rhythm emerged. Nights were spent cutting the edges of panels loose — leaving only the four corners intact so the span still held — until the night came to finish the job. The temporary OHE arrangement held. The span over Western Railway lines came down.***Story continues below this adBy the time the central span began coming down on the night of February 16, the crew moved with the certainty of people who had done this before. The sequence had become choreography.As the last train departed around 1.30am, a call from the railways signalled a power block. Railway workers discharged leftover current from the OHE, then rolled in on an inspection wagon — workers perched on the roof, ducking as they passed under the bridge — to uncoil the wire. On the bridge above, workers crouching with gas cutters got the signal. Sparks rained over the tracks. The crane clutched the panel. Once extracted, the temporary beam went in, railway workers rolled in again and fixed the OHE into position. Done by 4.30am.The extraction of panels was building toward the megablock: a six-hour window on the night of March 14, a weekend, in which both girders would be removed. The block started at 12.40am. Power was cut, the OHE disconnected. Spirits were high.But barely an hour in, the claw of the crane slackened. The hydraulic pipe had burst. Water began leaking. The dismay was immediate. The railway team joked that no bridge in their lifetime had brought them onto a platform for so many sleepless nights. The work would stretch onto another week.Story continues below this adUnderneath the regret, said Sharma, there was quiet relief. If it had to happen, better before they were in the thick of things.A week later, with the crane repaired, both girders were out by morning. The western half of the bridge was gone. Ahead lay the harder fight.*** Workers restore the overhead electrical wires on the morning of April 5, as trains resume running through the space where the Elphinstone Bridge once stood. (Credit Sankhadeep Banerjee)Even as work over the Western Railway tracks neared its end, the dismantling of the bridge over Central Railway tracks had stalled before it had properly begun. Except for two panels extracted in late January, the bridge had not budged.The deadlock was over the temporary OHE arrangement. Despite it working over the Western Railway, Central Railway officials refused to agree to it. Their concern was safety: the temporary arrangement was untested on their tracks, and they wanted more time per block to manage the OHE work.Story continues below this adCentral Railway first directed the MRIDC to request for 12-hour blocks, then six-hour megablocks per panel — double the time the same work had taken on Western Railway tracks, and possible only on weekends.“Officially, we have had 26 discussions with the CR over the blocks. Unofficially, we have had 40,” said Prashant Mishra, project manager of Space Chem Engineers, the contractor carrying out the work. “With WR, we had three.”The cost of waiting was mounting. The 800MT crane had been in position at the east end since late January, standing idle at a rent of around Rs 80 lakh per month. Half the contract cost for dismantling had already gone into crane rent alone. BEFORE AND AFTER: The Elphinstone Bridge, seen intact spanning the railway tracks in the photograph on the left. On the right, the same view on Sunday morning after complete dismantling. The red dotted line marks where the bridge once stood. (Credit: Akash Patil)On the night of February 15, Mishra and Sharma said they decided the fight was futile: the next day, the crane would be asked to pack up and leave. Central Railway’s DRM Hiresh Mina did not respond to calls and messages.Story continues below this adThen MRIDC’s managing director stepped in, meeting with Central Railway’s DRM. Western Railway officials were asked to lead in the initial dismantling. Central Railway changed its stance.Once clearance came, Central Railway moved quickly. Take a block that very night, they told MRIDC, who asked for a day to prepare. When a corridor block was planned the following day, the crane operator met with a road accident on the way back from dinner. Another night lost. But once work resumed, it moved fast. The final megablock, on the intervening night of Saturday and Sunday, intended to take down the last girders.The welder climbed down his ladder just after 6 am on April 5. The crowbar went in. The girder swung. The fireworks went off.Around the crane, workers who had spent the night crouching with gas cutters and walkie talkies stood and watched. Phones went up. Someone laughed.Where the bridge had been, there was only sky.