Haus-Knipp railway bridge

Haus-Knipp railway bridge
	Haus-Knipp railway bridge with the red pillars of the motorway bridge behind
Convicted	Duisburg-Meiderich Nord – Hohenbudberg railway line
Crossing of	Rhine
place	Duisburg
construction	Truss bridge
overall length	767 m
Longest span	186 m
start of building	March 1910
opening	October 1, 1912
	location

51.478611111111 6.6805555555556Coordinates: 51 ° 28 ′ 43 " N , 6 ° 40 ′ 50" E

The Haus-Knipp railway bridge is a railway bridge over the Rhine north of the Duisburg-Ruhrorter ports between Duisburg-Beeckerwerth and Duisburg-Baerl on what is now the Oberhausen – Meerbeck railway line .

history

As a replacement for the Ruhrort – Homberg trajectory, which was closed in 1907 but had been overloaded for many years , a connection stretching far to the north was laid between the Meiderich Nord station on the "Cologne-Mindener Emschertalbahn" of the former Cologne-Mindener Railway Company and the railway network on the left bank of the Rhine . Construction of the Rhine bridge began in March 1910 and was opened for freight traffic on October 1, 1912. Passenger trains only ran over the bridge since May 15, 1929.

At the end of World War II , the bridge was blown up by retreating German troops. With the help of British pioneers , it was rebuilt in its old form with its characteristic half-timbered construction as early as 1945 and opened to traffic on February 26, 1946.

Regular passenger traffic with passenger trains ended on September 24, 1983. From 1998 to December 2012, the double-track bridge was only used on the southern track, the other track between Baerl and Beeckerwerth was closed and partially dismantled. Work on restoring the double-track system began in May 2012. The Rheinhausen-Hochfeld bridge over the Rhine was renovated in autumn 2001, and from August to October an express train ran across the bridge from Dortmund to Trier on Fridays from August to October .

Technical specifications

The main stream opening has a span of 186 meters, making it the widest - spanned half-timbered girder in Europe at the time of construction . Left and right are two somewhat smaller, 106-meter-long truss bridges. The receiving water area is bridged on the left bank of the Rhine with three yokes , on the right bank there are nine yokes.

Since independent bridge girders were constructed for both tracks, there are a total of 24 truss bridges, each 41 meters long, with a construction weight of around 2,600 tons, which were supplied by the iron construction workshops of the former Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte in Rheinhausen . The construction costs were around 8.5 million marks (around 45,215,133 € in today's purchasing power).

In 1912 the Haus-Knipp-Brücke was the first electricity bridge in Duisburg without bridge towers.

Naming

The bridge is an old landmark for navigation on the Rhine . The eponymous manor house Knipp was located in the immediate vicinity of the bridge and was demolished in 1939 when the Rhine dike was raised.

literature

Atlas of the journal for building industry , 62nd year 1912 (various tables) ( digitized at the Central and State Library Berlin)
Georg Kreischer: The Baerler Haus-Knipp-Bridge. In: Freundeskreis lively Grafschaft eV Duisburg (ed.): Yearbook 2002/2003 of the districts of the city of Duisburg on the left bank of the Rhine. ISSN 1435-6252 , page 28 ff.
Willy Reuter, Wilhelm Stoltenburg, Karl Brunner: Reports on the reconstruction of the bridge in 1945 and 1946. In: Der Stahlbau , 19th year 1950, issues 1–3.
Hans-Paul Höpfner: Railways. Your story on the Lower Rhine . Mercator Verlag, Duisburg 1986, ISBN 3-87463-132-X .

Web links

Commons : Haus-Knipp-Eisenbahnbrücke - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Description of this sight on the route of industrial culture

Entry by Claus Weber about Haus-Knipp-Brücke near Duisburg in the database " KuLaDig " of the Rhineland Regional Association
Photo of the bridge , around 1960, on digit.wdr.de