Elbe bridge Wittenberge (railway)
The same bridge Wittenberge is with 1030 meters the longest bridges new building of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the GDR. The steel construction, located southeast of Wittenberge , leads from km 50.7 the double- track Magdeburg – Wittenberge railway over the Elbe ( river km 453.8) and the diked foreland.
History and construction
Original building (1851)
In June 1847, the Magdeburg-Wittenbergesche Railway Company started building the first 1,443 meter long bridge over the Elbe, based on a plan by Anton Ferdinand Benda . In the first few months, the extensive work on river regulation , which was linked to the bridge construction, was carried out and a number of sheet pile walls were set up as preparatory work for the erection of the piers and abutments . When work was to be resumed in March 1848 after the winter break, the bourgeois revolution broke out in Germany , which meant that work came to a near standstill from spring 1848 to autumn 1849. This construction delay and the deteriorating general economic situation resulted in the railway company being forced to save. Benda succeeded in modifying the planning in such a way that, on the one hand, around a quarter of the originally calculated construction costs were saved and, on the other hand, the long standstill was somewhat offset by a shortening of the construction time.
The structure, executed according to the new planning, initially consisted of a masonry vault bridge with five openings each 18.9 meters clear width over the Taube Elbe and the Stepenitz , starting on the Wittenberger Ufer . After a subsequent 345 meters long windrow a symmetrical iron followed in the field of the main current swing bridge with two openings each 12.6 meters width and a central 8.8 meter thick pillar, then a wood - truss structure having 14 openings on brick pillars, thereby three Fields with 40 meters of clear width and eleven fields with 54 meters of clear width. A flood bridge made of masonry vaults with twelve openings each 18.9 meters clear width followed up to the western bank. A total of 16 pillars had a foundation on wooden piles .
The wooden superstructures of the river bridge were made in diamond framework as Howe girders with framework posts made of round iron bars. The bridge superstructures were prepared in advance on the construction site and then assembled; only the first 54 meter long girder was fully assembled on land and successfully subjected to various load tests - only then was the final building permit issued . The Howe undercarriage girders were the major contributor to cost and time savings; Although it was assumed that, despite a simple impregnation with zinc chloride , they would have a significantly shorter lifespan than the masonry vaults and the iron swing bridge, it was expressly pointed out that this solution was sensible despite its provisional character and, based on a commercial calculation, after six Years of operation a renewal in a more permanent construction would be possible. In order to enable this renewal of the superstructures without a longer interruption of operations (i.e. without loss of revenue in the railway operations), the pillars between the eastern swing bridge and the western flood bridge were made larger than originally planned, so that a second track could be laid on new superstructures before the old superstructures were removed. The fact that a double-track expansion of the entire bridge or route was thereby considerably simplified was not decisive at the time because of the still relatively modest volume of traffic.
The bridge was put into operation on October 28, 1851. The construction costs amounted to 1,186,942 thalers , the railway company had spent another 335,000 thalers on river regulation, and the cost savings calculated in 1849 were thus achieved. After installing a plank covering for a 4.1 meter wide carriageway, the structure could also be used by road traffic from 1852 during longer breaks in train traffic, as was part of the original planning.
Renewals in iron framework (1884/1911)
In 1883 and 1884, the wooden superstructures, which were seen as a temporary solution in 1851, were replaced by wrought - iron half-timbered structures .
From 1909 to 1911 the two-track expansion and reconstruction of the bridge followed. In the area of the river bridge, two pillars were removed from the river bed in favor of Elbe shipping, flood runoff and the risk of damage from ice. A steel truss bridge with a buckled top chord and a span of around 37.2 meters replaced the swing bridge and its central pillar. The following two short bridge fields were spanned by a new 84 meter long steel truss bridge with the demolition of the intermediate pillar, which was designed as an 11.5 meter high semi-parabolic girder . The remaining superstructures had the Prussian State Railways exchanged for Schwedlerträger with 55.2 meters span (or 41.1 meters in the western end field). For the second track, the new superstructures (over the pillars built in 1851 in the appropriate width) were virtually doubled. The track upstream (ie in the position of the 1851 superstructures) was in turn prepared for additional use as a road bridge by installing a plank covering.
Towards the end of the Second World War , on April 12, 1945, German troops blew up the two eastern superstructures of the river bridge with the river pillar between them, blocking rail and shipping traffic. A single-track wooden makeshift bridge built by Soviet troops in autumn 1945 enabled the railroad to operate again at short notice. In April 1946, after the destroyed river pier was restored, two temporary steel superstructures from the “Roth-Waagner” system were installed to replace the southern track . In 1947 the makeshift superstructures for the northern bridge followed, which, however, was only used as a road overpass due to the dismantling of a track.
In this condition - equipped with only one track and the permissible train speed reduced to 30 km / h - the bridge structure remained until 1950. In that year the second track was put back into operation, with the Stendal – Wittenberge track also being used by road traffic.
Since the Magdeburg – Wittenberge line was one of the most important north-south connections in the GDR , the makeshift superstructures were replaced by new standard superstructures from 1955 to 1957. With the opening of the new road bridge over the Elbe in 1976, additional road traffic on the structure ended.
New building (1987)
Due to the electrification of the railway line, the entire bridge train was replaced by a 1030 meter long new building from 1982 to 1987. It was the longest new bridge built by the Deutsche Reichsbahn . As a construction system, the 14-span bridge has three continuous girders in the longitudinal direction with two five and one four spans and is made of steel as a postless strut framework. The sleepers are attached directly to the bridge substructure without a ballast bed. There is a footbridge on the upstream side. The passage height for ships is 6.10 meters. This makes the structure one of the low bridges that span the Elbe.
literature
- Michael Braun: The Elbe Bridge Wittenberge - a fate. In: Bautechnik, 81st year 2004, issue 4, pp. 308-315.
- Erich Fiedler: Road bridges over the Elbe. Saxoprint Dresden 2005, ISBN 3-9808879-6-0 .
- Hans Pottgießer: Railway bridges from two centuries. Birkhäuser Verlag Basel, 1985. ISBN 3-7643-1677-2 .
- Victor von Unruh , Anton Ferdinand Benda: Communications about the construction of the Elbe bridge near Wittenberge. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , 4th year 1854, issue 1/2, columns 7–44.
Web links
- Wittenberger Elbbruecke - Document collection (PDF; 16.5 MB)
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Coordinates: 52 ° 59 ′ 3 ″ N , 11 ° 45 ′ 35 ″ E