Old Belgrade Railway Bridge
Coordinates: 44 ° 48 ′ 5 ″ N , 20 ° 26 ′ 21 ″ E
| Old Belgrade Railway Bridge | ||
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| Official name | Stari železnički most | |
| Crossing of | Save | |
| place | Belgrade | |
| construction | Lattice girder bridge | |
| overall length | 462 m; 377 m | |
| Number of openings | five; four | |
| Longest span | 96.6 m | |
| start of building | 1882 | |
| completion | 1884 | |
| closure | 2018 | |
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The Old Belgrade Railway Bridge ( Serbian Стари железнички мост, Stari železnički most ) was the first railway bridge over the Save in Belgrade , the capital of Serbia, and thus Belgrade's first permanent bridge over the Save at all. The Danube was not bridged in Belgrade until 50 years later.
The bridge, which opened in 1884, was finally closed in 2018 after traffic gradually shifted to the New Belgrade Railway Bridge , the so-called Belgrade railway junction with the new Belgrade Center station went into full operation and finally the Beograd-Glavna station, also opened in 1884, was closed .
prehistory
In the middle of the 19th century the northern border of Serbia was formed by the Sava and the Danube; Belgrade was right on the border with Austria-Hungary . There were conflicting interests about a future railroad. France, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were interested in a connection between Europe and Constantinople (via Vienna and Pest, later Budapest), while inland Serbia preferred a connection to the Adriatic .
In the Berlin Congress of 1878 a new peace order for south-eastern Europe was established and, among other things, Serbia was obliged to build a railway to connect the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish lines.
Austria-Hungary and Serbia therefore agreed in 1880 that Serbia would build the Belgrade – Niš railway line , Hungary would run the route from Pest via Neusatz / Novi Sad to Semlin, the former border town on the Hungarian side of the Sava and today's Belgrade district of Zemun , and the costs the bridge over the Sava and the short connection between Hungary and Serbia would be carried in equal parts. The construction management for the bridge would take over Hungary. On February 3, 1881, Serbia signed a contract with the Union Générale, founded by Paul Eugéne Bentoux three years earlier, on the financing, construction and operation of the Serbian railway. Shortly thereafter, Hungary agreed a similar contract with the then French-controlled Länderbank on the Pest – Semlin line, in which the French bridge and track construction company Fives-Lille was also involved.
Sava Bridge (1884)
On Saturday June 20th Jul. / July 2nd greg. In 1881, construction work on the Serbian Railway and thus also on the Sava Bridge was officially opened by Prince Milan . The Union Générale went bankrupt at the beginning of 1882 and thus triggered considerable upheavals, but the construction work was refinanced and continued soon afterwards under the leadership of the Bank Comptoir d'Escompte and the Länderbank.
The wrought - iron single-track lattice girder bridge built by Fives-Lille was 462 m long and had five openings with spans of 86.1 + 3 × 96.6 + 86.1 m.
On August 18th and 19th July / August 30th and 31st, Greg. Exercise tests were carried out in 1884. On the following day, August 20 / September 1, 1884, King Milan I took the train from the new Beograd-Glavna station over the Sava Bridge to Vienna.
The Orient Express was able to travel continuously to Constantinople over the Sava Bridge and Belgrade for the first time in August 1888, after the last gaps on the Belgrade – Niš – Constantinople line had been closed at the end of 1887.
On July 28, 1914, the First World War began with the declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against Serbia, which had preceded the assassination attempt in Sarajevo .
The following night shootings began on the Sava. The captain and the helmsman of the Hungarian steam tug Alkotmanj became the first civilian victims of this war. At half past one the Sava Bridge was blown up by order of the Serbian government to prevent an occupation of Belgrade. The bridge was poorly repaired by the Serbs by the end of the year, but was damaged again in subsequent fighting.
After Belgrade was finally conquered in October 1915 with the support of German troops, a makeshift railway bridge made of Kohn and Roth-Waagner bridge equipment was built over the Save by the end of 1915 . On the right bank of the Sava, a direct track connection with the line leading to the south was built so that military supply trains did not have to go to the Beograd-Glavna terminus. This provisional solution did its job throughout the war and, among other things, made it possible for the Balkan suit to travel continuously from Berlin to Constantinople. Shortly before the end of the First World War, the bridge was blown up again when the German troops withdrew on November 1, 1918.
Sava Bridge (1921)
The rubble of the destroyed bridge was removed from the river bed. A new steel lattice girder bridge, which in turn was single-track, was built on the largely undamaged stone pillars. It was opened to traffic in 1921.
In the Balkan campaign of World War II , the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was attacked by the Wehrmacht on April 6, 1941 , and Belgrade was heavily bombed on that day and the following . In an attempt to stop a German invasion, all three bridges were blown up on the night of April 11-12, 1941, ie the old railway bridge, the King Alexander Bridge further downstream and the Pančevo Bridge over the Danube. The Wehrmacht took Belgrade on April 12, 1941.
Soon afterwards, the Wehrmacht again erected a makeshift bridge, which was inaugurated on May 29, 1941 with propaganda support by Die Deutsche Wochenschau .
In 1942 work began on building a second railway bridge about 20 m downstream. However, it was not finished when the Allied bombing of Belgrade began in the spring of 1944. The bridges were hit. When the Germans ended their retreat from Belgrade in October 1944, they destroyed the remains of the bridge.
Sava Bridge (1946)
After considering using the destroyed new bridge as the basis for the reconstruction, the decision was made to go for the old bridge, using parts of the new one. The bridge was in operation again in 1945, the remaining work lasted until 1946. The lattice girder bridge with very wide meshes is now 377 m long and has four openings with spans of 3x96.6 + 87 m.
The old and still only railway bridge over the Sava played an important role until the opening of the new Belgrade railway bridge a little upstream, but it took some time for it to fully take over traffic. Only when the line around the castle was abolished and the Beograd-Glavna railway station closed, the bridge was closed.
Your future doesn't seem to be clear yet. It may be dismantled and part of the steel structure nearby on the bank is used for other purposes.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Anton Tuma von Waldkampf: Serbia . 2nd Edition. Zuckschwerdt & Co., Leipzig 1897, p. 209 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ Convention between Austria-Hungary and Serbia in execution of the Treaty of Berlin. In: Le Journal des chemins de fer of April 10, 1880, p. 245 (French)
- ^ Bulletin de la semaine. In: Le Journal des chemins de fer of March 26, 1881, p. 193 (French)
- ↑ Dépêches financières. In: Le Journal des chemins de fer of May 1, 1881, p. 293 (French)
- ↑ Dépêches financières. In: Le Journal des chemins de fer of July 9, 1881, p. 469 (French)
- ↑ Old railway bridge over the Save. In: Structurae
- ^ The Principality of Serbia proclaimed itself the Kingdom of Serbia on March 6, 1882.
- ↑ a b c d e f Dejan Aleksić: Prestonički feniks nad Savom. Article dated August 13, 2018 on Politika.rs
- ↑ Thomas Brey: The "Great War" began in Belgrade: First shots - first dead. Article from July 30, 2014 on RNZonline
- ↑ László Kovács (Ed.): History of the Hungarian Railways 1846-2000. Hungarian State Railways Publishing House, Budapest 2000, p. 171
- ^ Die Deutsche Wochenschau (563/26/1941) on filmarchives online
- ↑ Stari savski most, čekajući preseljenje. Article from May 20, 2019 on rts.rs
