Railway bridge Wesel

Ruins of the railway bridge at Rhine kilometer 815

The historic Wesel railway bridge was built between 1872 and 1874 by the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (CME) as part of the Hamburg-Venloer Bahn and was the northernmost Rhine bridge in Germany throughout its existence. From 1917 an additional road bridge existed near the railway bridge until both bridges were destroyed during the Second World War. Only the road bridge was then rebuilt.

Building history

Landing of British floating tanks on the right bank of the Rhine near the destroyed Wesel railway bridge during Operation Plunder , March 24, 1945

The former Wesel railway bridge secured by Fort I.

The entrance to Fort I on the left bank of the Rhine next to the former Wesel railway bridge

The reason for bridging the lower Lower Rhine in Wesel was the construction of the Hamburg-Venloer Bahn from Venlo via Wesel, Haltern , Münster and Bremen to Hamburg . The route through the densely populated Ruhr area with a bridge over the Rhine near Duisburg , originally planned by a foreign consortium, was prevented by the Prussian state, which demanded a route across the Prussian fortress of Wesel and granted CME the necessary concession for the entire route to Hamburg. This enabled the soldiers stationed in the fortress of Wesel to defend the bridge against a Rhine crossing in the event of war or to use it as a base for a march to the west. A covering of the track zone with planks was provided for in the planning stage so that the bridge could also be used by other vehicles.

On both sides of the actual river bridge there were foreshore bridges made of hard-fired bricks , 65 on the left bank of the Rhine with a total length of 770 meters, on the right bank of the river 32 also brick and 6 steel bridges with a total of 766 meters. In between, the Rhine was spanned at kilometer 815 with a river bridge consisting of four individual steel parts, each 104 meters long. At the time of construction, the structure with its 1950 meters was the longest bridge on the Rhine. During construction, the bricks were burned on site from the clay extracted from the excavation of the pillars. The extraordinary dimension of the structure was chosen not only because of the frequent risk of flooding, but also because the military did not tolerate a railway embankment and wanted a clear view of the fortress.

At the beginning and the end of the river bridge, the bridge was given so-called drum mechanisms for defense , as was common with Rhine bridges at the time . Further fortifications were also built in the foreland. On the left bank of the Rhine, behind the dike, next to the tracks, Fort I was built at the expense of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn. It is still completely preserved and is privately owned. On the right bank of the Rhine there were other forts on the Wesel railway lines, which were supposed to protect the Wesel fortress. No traces of these fortifications have been preserved.

The Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahngesellschaft exhibited the plans for the Rhine bridge and the Elbe bridges in Hamburg, which were still under construction, at the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna and received an honorary diploma from Section III (for road, bridge and railway construction).

Concrete bunkers were built on both sides of the Rhine during the First World War to defend the Wesel bridgehead. These were blown up in 1921 by order of the Allies .

Towards the end of the Second World War in 1945, the bridge was the last line of retreat of the retreating Wehrmacht during the conquest of the left Lower Rhine by English, Canadian and American troops ( Operation Varsity from the north, Operation Grenade from the south ). On the morning of March 10, 1945, German pioneers blew up the Wesel railway bridge on the orders of General Alfred Schlemm - three days after US troops captured the Ludendorff Bridge near Remagen. The bridge was not rebuilt after the war; at last it was only used by two branch lines .

It was not until 1968 that the remains of the two river pillars that hindered navigation on the Rhine were removed. The bridge is part of the Route of Industrial Heritage .

Railway history

On March 1, 1874, the section Wesel - holders of the Paris-Hamburg railway was opened; On New Year's Eve 1874, the first train crossed the new bridge without any major celebrations. From July 1, 1878, it was also used by the Boxteler Bahn , which led to the Venloer line in Büderich . The hopes of the builders in the use of the Haltern – Venlo railway line were not fulfilled, however, and a branch line- like operation remained. Only the international express trains of the Boxteler Bahn frequented the bridge heavily until the First World War. Because of the high construction costs and the low use of the route, the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn and, after its nationalization, also the Prussian State Railroad charged a surcharge of 11.25 kilometers for each ticket of the bridge users. In 1926 and 1927 the bridge on the old river pillars was renewed and adapted to the increased train weights.

Picture gallery - construction of the railway bridge

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  View of the construction site

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  Construction of the approach bridge

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  Construction of the approach bridge

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  View of the approach bridge before completion

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  view

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  View of the construction site with a view of the approach bridge

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  Construction of the river bridge

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  View through the iron structure of the river bridge

Picture gallery

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  Remains of the Wesel railway bridge on the left bank of the Rhine

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  Open arches with water drains

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  Detail view

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  Bunker just before the Rhine

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  Railway bridge Wesel, postcard 1916

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  In the foreground the Niederrhein Bridge

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  In the background the Niederrhein Bridge

See also

• List of Rhine bridges

literature

• Krabbe: The renewal of the iron superstructures of the railway bridge over the Rhine near Wesel. In: Die Bautechnik , 5th year 1927.
• Ernst: The bridge structures of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. In: Reichsbahn , 4th year 1928, issue 22.
• Hans-P. Höpfner: Railways. Your story on the Lower Rhine. Duisburg 1986.
• Jutta Prieur: History of the city of Wesel. Volume 1, Düsseldorf 1991 / Volume 2, Düsseldorf 1992.
• Ulrich Dinkelaker: Wesel bridgehead. Lünen 1993.
• Alexander Berkel: War on your own doorstep. Rhine crossing and air landing on the Lower Rhine in 1945. Wesel 1994.
• Vincent Freriks: The Venlo - Wesel - Haltern line. In: Railways on the Lower Rhine. (Ed. on behalf of the city of Wesel) Wesel 2005.
• Hans Schlieper, Vincent Freriks: The Boxteler Bahn. The North Brabant German Railway Company and the international Vlissingen postal route. German Society for Railway History eV, Werl 2014, ISBN 978-3-937189-79-6 .

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• Annual reports of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn 1865–1876
• Excerpts from the negotiations of the general meetings of the shareholders of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn 1869–1879

Web links

Commons : Alte Rheinbrücke Wesel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~7~10778
• Entry on the Wesel railway bridge in the " KuLaDig " database of the Rhineland Regional Association

Individual evidence

1. ^ Centralcommission of the German Empire for the Vienna World Exhibition (ed.): Official report on the Vienna World Exhibition in 1873. Volume 2, Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig 1874, p. 355.
2. ↑ Bloody winter. The last weeks of the Second World War in Kevelaer. In: Blattus.de. Retrieved April 17, 2015 . 

The next bridge upstream: Niederrheinbrücke Wesel

Bridges over the Rhine

The next bridge downstream: Rhine bridge Rees-Kalkar

Coordinates: 51 ° 39 ′ 11 "  N , 6 ° 35 ′ 27.9"  E