Meudon Railway Viaduct
Coordinates: 48 ° 48 ′ 49 ″ N , 2 ° 14 ′ 48 ″ E
| Meudon Railway Viaduct | ||
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| Official name | Viaduc de Meudon | |
| use | Paris – Brest railway line | |
| Crossing of | Ru d'Arthelon valley | |
| place | Meudon | |
| construction | Arch bridge | |
| overall length | 142.7 m | |
| Number of openings | 7th | |
| opening | September 9, 1840 | |
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The Meudon railway viaduct (French Viaduc de Meudon , Viaduc du Val-Fleury or Pont Hélène ) spans the Ru d'Arthelon valley in the Meudon district . It was built in 1840 as part of the railway line from Paris to Versailles and is considered the oldest civil engineering structure in the French railway system. The viaduct is 32 meters high and spans a length of 145 meters with seven masonry arches.
The decision to build the bridge was made in the mid-1830s and the design of the viaduct was made by engineers Albert Auguste Perdonnet and Emile Auguste Payen. The foundation stone was laid on October 1, 1838, by the French Crown Prince Ferdinand Philippe d'Orléans . The foundations had to be driven 20 to 25 meters deep into the loamy soil to the chalk base . Because of the tight schedule for construction, seven arches were built instead of a single one; the execution with an arch would have been cheaper, but would have required a longer construction period. The construction work, led by Marc Seguin and Antoine-Rémy Polonceau , was accompanied by protests from the local population and lasted two years. On September 9, 1840, King Louis-Philippe inaugurated the bridge and named it Pont Hélène (Helenenbrücke) in honor of his daughter-in-law Helene zu Mecklenburg . The first regular train ran on November 10, 1840.
Only a few hundred meters away from the bridge, the Versailles train accident occurred on May 8, 1842 , one of the worst rail disasters of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Meudon Railway Viaduct was a popular subject for painters and photographers. The best-known depictions of the viaduct include Lyonel Feininger's drawings and woodcuts from Meudon made in 1911 and the photographs by André Kertész from 1928.
From 1935 to 1937 the bridge was widened from one to four tracks. It is currently used by suburban trains from Paris-Montparnasse to Mantes-la-Jolie , Rambouillet and Dreux , as well as long-distance trains from Paris to Granville and regional trains from Paris to Chartres . Until 1989 the viaduct was also on the route of the long-distance trains to Le Mans and from there on to Nantes , Rennes or Brest ; since then, these trains have been using the high-speed line LGV Atlantique . The bridge crosses the valley line RER C des Réseau express régional d'Île-de-France and the Rue de Paris from Meudon. The four-track Meudon station is directly connected to the western bridgehead. In order to underline its importance as a monument, the viaduct has been illuminated at night for several years.
literature
- En chemin de fer de Paris à Versailles par la rive gauche, de 1840 à nos jours . Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Meudon 1990.
- Auguste Perdonnet: Traité élémentaire des chemins de fer , Volume 1 ; Paris, 1865; P. 483 f.
Web links
- the Meudon Railway Viaduct. In: Structurae
- Communauté d'Agglomération Arc de Seine: Le Pont Hélène ou l'arrivée du chemin de fer à Meudon
Individual evidence
- ↑ Auguste Perdonnet: Traité élémentaire des chemins de fer . Langlois et Leclercq, Paris 1858; Pp. 483-484.
- ^ Florens Deuchler: Locomotives and Railway Landscapes: Lyonel Feininger 1871–1956; 40 drawings and sketches 1901–1913; Special exhibition from May 11th - August 25th 1991 on the centenary of BBC Brown Boveri AG - ABB Switzerland 1891–1991 . Langmatt Sidney and Jenny Brown Foundation, Baden 1991, ISBN 3-85545-052-8 .
- ^ André Kertész: André Kertész in Paris: Photographs 1925–1936 . Schirmer-Mosel, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-88814-473-6 .
- ^ Plan of the French rail network