Itztalbrücke (railway)

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Coordinates: 50 ° 16 ′ 50 ″  N , 11 ° 0 ′ 55 ″  E

Itztal Bridge
Itztal Bridge
Convicted High-speed line from Nuremberg to Erfurt
Subjugated Itz , Coburg – Ernstthal railway line on Rennsteig
place Roedental
construction Steel composite truss bridge
overall length 868 m
width 14.3 m
Longest span 58 m
Construction height 6.5 m
height 30 m
building-costs € 18 million
start of building 2002
completion November 2005
location
Itztalbrücke (railway) (Bavaria)
Itztalbrücke (railway)

The Itztalbrücke is a railway overpass in Upper Franconia between the places Rödental and Dörfles-Esbach , which spans the Itz valley with the Coburg – Ernstthal railway on Rennsteig and the Herzogsweg. The structure is part of the new Ebensfeld – Erfurt line between the route kilometers 107.714 and 108.582. The Itztalbrücke of the Autobahn 73 runs parallel to the railway bridge at a distance of about 25 meters on the western side .

At a design speed of 300 km / h in the structural area, the route is curved in the ground plan, the gradient falls towards the north at 12.5 per thousand. The bridge has a slab track with a distance of 4.7 meters between the tracks and a noise protection wall 2.0 meters in height on both sides . The upper edge of the rail is a maximum of 31 meters above the valley floor. The construction costs were around 18 million euros .

Foundation and substructure

The structure is based on 142 large bored piles with a diameter of 1.2 meters and a maximum length of 30 meters. The pillar of the bridge have a rectangular reinforced concrete hollow cross-section with broken corners and tapered with a suit of 70: 1 upwards. The longitudinal forces from the superstructure, e.g. B. as a result of braking, wear eight of the total of 14 pillars in the ground.

superstructure

The 15-span railway overpass has a total length of 868 meters. The spans of the two peripheral fields are 57.0 meters, the 13 inner fields each have a 58.0 meter span. A chain of single-span girders was included in the design planning. A special design consisting of a chain of two-span girders with a three- span girder in the middle was implemented. The girders, which are up to 174 meters long, are separated by expansion joints . The rails run through the bridge superstructure and the adjoining railway structure without any gaps, without extending the rails .

The 6.5 meter high superstructure is designed as a composite structure and consists of two postless strut trusses made of steel with a reinforced concrete slab up to 45 centimeters thick on top . The deck is 14.1 meters wide and the trusses have a center distance of 6.8 meters. The deck was provided with free-standing connection reinforcement for the later installation of the slab track .

  • Deck slab (March 2006)

  • Itztal Bridge (March 2009)

  • Itztalbrücke from the southeast (August 2009)

  • Itztalbrücke from the south (June 2014)

history

Construction work began in 2002. In November 2005, the bridge was completed as the first structure in the southern section of the line. After that, the bridge was barred from unauthorized entry by bars. This condition lasted for over ten years, see the following section .

At the beginning of March 2017, test runs were carried out with two trains, each weighing around 1000 tons. Since the 2017/2018 timetable change, trains loaded with passengers have been using the bridge as planned.

"Soda" bridge

The railroad overpass made headlines after its completion as an example of the waste of public money. The bridge is also mentioned in the 2006 Black Book of the Taxpayers Association . Critics complained that the completion of the new line could not be expected before 2015, i.e. that no trains would use the bridge for at least ten years. Investments of more than two billion euros were still necessary to complete the new line in the section between Ebensfeld and Ilmenau (around 77 km) (as of 2006).

The argument for the upfront investment was that the railway and motorway bridges are so close together in the bundling section that building the railway bridge later would be technically more difficult.

Locals often referred to the Itztal Bridge as the " Soda Bridge " because it was not used .

Operational restrictions

When the slab track was approved in 2015, it was found that the calculations for the rail tensions made during the construction of the bridge were incorrect and that the permissible values ​​were significantly exceeded. As a result, a bundle of remedial measures was implemented, which included, among other things, special rail support points, a specifically selected position of the rail welds, constant metrological monitoring and attempts to better understand the effects.

Due to a possible overrun of rail stress on the bridge this should not since 2020 with a double header of ICE 3 are busy. Other ICE series are not affected by the restrictions. DB Fernverkehr originally wanted to run the ICE Sprinter between Munich and Berlin with two class 403 multiple units from December 2019 in order to increase the seating capacity. The sprinters are very much in demand on this route. However, this project failed due to the operational restrictions due to this bridge. For this reason, the sprinters will only operate with one multiple unit in the 2020 timetable until a solution is found. However, the DB denied this representation and announced that it would soon use ICE 3 double units on the route. According to further information, DB Netz only recommended DB Fernverkehr not to use ICE 3 in double traction. On the basis of measurement results that were incorporated into a new calculation model, the restrictions could have been lifted in spring 2020.

Load journeys with freight trains are planned for the beginning of September 2020 in order to gain knowledge in this regard as well.

Web links

Commons : Itztalbrücke  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Route brochure of DB Netz AG Schüßler-Plan: Route brochure for new line VDE 8.1 Breitengüßbach – Erfurt. Published by DB Netz AG Regional Area Southeast. As of June 1, 2017. p. 99.
  2. ↑ a b c Reiner Selig: Dealing with technical challenges - bridge building in the major VDE 8 project . In: Bridge Construction . Issue 1/2, 2018, ISSN  1867-643X , p. 98 f . ( symposium-brueckenbau.de [PDF]).
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Heine: Remarkable massive bridges on the new line of the Deutsche Bahn AG Ebensfeld – Erfurt in Thuringia . In: 5th Dresden Bridge Construction Symposium - proceedings, March 1995, p. 117.
  4. ↑ Kinkel-Partner.de: Projects> Bridge Construction> Itztal Bridge
  5. ↑ Friedrich List: The "Unfinished" is still being built. In: Eisenbahn-Kurier , No. 11, 2008, pp. 40–45
  6. ↑ Simone Bastian: Bridging Theory and Practice . In: Coburger Tageblatt . March 9, 2017, p. 23 ( online for a fee ).
  7. ↑ The "Soda Bridge" near Rödental ( Memento from September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Turntable , issue 302, March 2020, page 20.
  9. ↑ DB denies usage restrictions: ICE-3 doubles are to strengthen Berlin – Munich. In: eurailpress.de. March 5, 2020, accessed March 8, 2020 .
  10. ^ SFS Cologne - Rhein / Main: ICE 3 withdrawal for VDE 8 route . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International . No. 4 , April 2020, ISSN  1421-2811 , p. 180 .
  11. ↑ a b Volker Kabisch: Double traction with BR 403 on the VDE 8.1? In: Münchner Schiene . tape 36 , no. 98 , May 2020, p. 7 f . ( PDF ).