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Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where bridges get roasted, beetles get leveled up, and beavers wear hard hats. 🧱🐞👷‍♂️

This week we salute the Chenab Bridge, the tallest railway bridge in the world, standing proudly above the Himalayas and metaphorically drop-kicking gravity in the face. There’s also:

• An underwater coral city builder (yes, really)

• The first ever card reveal from the super secret and still unannounced trading card game

• Paddy’s questionable career pivot into stick-carving

• And an indie game where I accidentally named myself Hannah and threw bugs off tambourines.

Read on for mega bridges, secret card games, and exactly zero architect-designed glass walkways. Let’s go.

Let’s dive into it 👇

This week, we’re giving away FIVE copies of Pup Champs! 🐶🏆

From the cozy-brained geniuses behind Railbound and inbento comes a tactical puzzle game where you coach a team of delightfully determined doggos through over 170 adorable challenges. It’s like football, but with more tail-wagging and zero offside rules.

Perfect for puzzle lovers, dog people, or anyone who’s ever yelled “good boy!” at a loading screen.

And now, drumroll please… 🥁

🏆 alm0ndman0 🏆
🏆 lichtundnichts 🏆
🏆 bishopdaniel033 🏆
🏆 ururun2002 🏆
🏆 annaberisford 🏆

Check your email to claim your pup-powered prize and get puzzling! 🧠🐾

Want in on the next giveaway?
Vote in this week’s Super Secret Trading Card Reveal Poll below!
You could win a game and determine the next card that mysteriously gets leaked... 👀

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

The Chenab Bridge, India

(a.k.a. “Suck it, gravity.”)

Move over Eiffel Tower. Pack it up, Golden Gate. There’s a new overachiever in the class.

Rising a vertigo-inducing 359 meters above the Chenab River in the Himalayas (that’s taller than the Eiffel Tower, and unlike it, this one actually does something), the Chenab Bridge is officially the world’s tallest railway bridge. That’s right - it’s for trains. Heavy, fast, gloriously clunky trains. Because engineers don’t build things to be admired from a café terrace - we build them to work.

This steel arch monster had to withstand winds of 260 km/h, seismic activity, and the crushing weight of every architect's fragile ego once they found out they weren’t invited. (Probably too busy designing a building that leaks when it rains. Again.)

Constructed using over 28,000 metric tons of steel, 586 meters long, and featuring a central span of 467 meters, the Chenab Bridge is a triumph of logic, load-bearing sanity, and sheer engineering bravado.

It’s a structure so bold, so daring, that it makes you wonder:

Did engineers build this just to prove they could?

Yes. Yes, we did.

⚡ Cool Links

🤯 The World's Highest Railway Bridge Opens This Week
India’s Chenab Bridge, towering 359 meters above the river (that’s 35m taller than the Eiffel Tower), is set to open on June 6. It’s earthquake-resistant, windproof up to 260 km/h, and expected to last 120 years.

🏚️ Germany’s Infrastructure is Falling Apart
According to this report, thousands of German bridges and schools are crumbling due to decades of underinvestment. The government has pledged €500 billion to fix it, but maybe they should have let engineers handle it from the start instead of letting architects design everything with glass and hope.

🌉 China’s Bridge-Building Bonanza
China is setting world records with their mega bridges, like the Ningbo-Zhoushan Railway Xihoumen Dual-purpose Highway and Railway Bridge. They build smarter, higher, and in places others wouldn’t dare. Architects, take note: function over form actually works.

🧜‍♀️ Life Below: Build a Coral Reef City
This underwater city-builder has you managing coral ecosystems with magical water spirits. It’s like SimCity, but wetter and with more tentacles. Try the demo during Steam Next Fest, June 9–16

🤫 CLASSIFIED SECTION

There have been whispers in the tunnels. Rustlings in the rafters. A rumour echoing through the ducts of the RCE community that a super secret trading card game is in development...

I can neither confirm nor deny these rumours. But what I can do - thanks to your votes in last week’s poll - is share the first-ever reveal: an Engineer card.

And here it is, behold: the BEAVER ENGINEER

An uncommon card (see the mysterious blue “U” in the corner), the Beaver Engineer is the OG dam-builder, with the kind of precision and work ethic that would make any structural engineer weep with pride. He’s the kind of guy who’d use reinforced mud and twigs just to mock an architect’s concept sketch.

This version is the standard print. BUT - and I cannot stress this enough - a holographic version exists. Think Gen 1 Pokémon levels of shiny nostalgia. Think First Edition Holographic Charizard.

On the holo, everything below the waterline sparkles, while our beaver buddy and his hard hat remain gloriously matte. Elegant. Powerful. Soaked in engineering symbolism.

Now, what do the numbers mean? What does “Loggerhead” actually do? That’s for you to ponder (and wildly speculate about in the replies). I’m watching 👀.

Now that the Beaver Engineer has surfaced, it’s time to vote on the next card to be revealed …should the rumours continue to mysteriously come true 👇

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

Paddy takes up wood carving…

My apprentice, Paddy, has officially pivoted to wood carving. 🐶💼 Watch him tackle a stick WAY too big for his job description, using nothing but teeth and sheer river-powered determination. 👇

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

This week’s Indie Game of the Week is Kabuto Park - where the bugs are big, the kicks are brutal, and I’ve accidentally named myself Hannah. 🐞🥊

Think Pokémon, but way more realistic: you catch actual insects, train them up, and then fling them off tambourines in dramatic slow-mo. I’ve caught rainbow beetles, hoverflies named Braticus, and battled against a guy called Ash (no Pikachu in sight, sadly).

🟢 It's weird. It's wonderful. It's 20% off on Steam right now.

👉 Watch the bug-battling chaos below and get Kabuto Park for 20% off here!

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when engineers are left alone with 50,000 bamboo poles and no architects in sight to say, “But what if it was... spirally?”

Every dry season in Cambodia, the Bamboo Bridge of Kampong Cham gets rebuilt by hand- yes, every single year - stretching a quarter mile across the Mekong River like an absolute legend made entirely of lawn furniture.

Let’s break this down:

• Materials: 100% bamboo, 0% architect-grade glass walkways no one asked for.

• Method: Manual labour. Thousands of poles tied together. No fancy tools. Just brains, brawn, and blistered thumbs.

• Capacity: Supports cars, motorbikes, and locals who have seen some stuff.

• Flexibility: It's literally flexible. You can feel it move under you, like nature's rollercoaster, but held together by hope and excellent structural intuition.

The best part? It’s temporary. 

It gets washed away during monsoon season and then, bam, rebuilt. Annually. Show me one architect who willingly rebuilds their own design every year. Meanwhile, Cambodian engineers are out here yeeting bamboo across rivers and making it work.

Final thoughts:

No fuss. No form-over-function nonsense. Just pure, sustainable, renewable engineering wizardry.

Bonus point for being the only bridge you could theoretically compost.

Final Score: 8.7/10 – Now that’s how you flex without steel.

🏗 r/realcivilengineer Spotlight

🤔 Thoughts from an Engineer