Malleco Viaduct

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Coordinates: 37 ° 57 ′ 48 ″  S , 72 ° 26 ′ 19 ″  W

Malleco Viaduct
Malleco Viaduct
use Railway bridge
Convicted Railway line Santiago de Chile - Puerto Montt
Subjugated Río Malleco
place Collipulli, Región de la Araucanía
construction Girder bridge
overall length 347.5 m
Longest span 5 × 69.5 m
height 102 m
start of building 1886
opening 1890
planner Victorino Aurelio Lastarria
location
Malleco Viaduct (Chile)
Malleco Viaduct

The Malleco Viaduct is a railway bridge in the Región de la Araucanía in Chile , which crosses the valley of the Malleco, a tributary of the Río Bío Bío , near Collipulli . It is the highest still operating railway bridge in Chile and is on the list of possible UNESCO World Heritage Sites .

description

The Malleco Viaduct is on the route from Santiago de Chile to Puerto Montt of the Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado in the section between Angol and Traiguén . It crosses the Malleco at a height of 102 m, making it Chile's second-highest bridge, only the Conchi Viaduct on the earlier route from Antofagasta to Bolivia is one meter higher.

The single-track bridge between the abutments is a total of 347.5 m long and 4 m wide. It is divided into 5 fields with a span of 69.5 m each. The track lies on the wide-meshed, steel lattice girders , which are supported by four half-timbered pillars. The first and fourth pillars are each 43.7 m high, the second 67.7 m and the third 75.7 m. The diagonal struts between the pillars and the superstructure as well as the narrower pillars at the beginning and at the end of the bridge were added later to adapt the bridge to the increased weight of the locomotives.

history

As part of the state-driven expansion of the railway network, the Chilean engineer Victorino Aurelio Lastarria planned the section from Angol to Traiguén with the Malleco viaduct. The tender for the work, initiated by the French government in 1885 , won Schneider et Cie in Le Creusot ahead of Gustave Eiffel and the Anciens Établissements Cail . The bridge has certain similarities with the Grandfey Viaduct over the Saane near Freiburg, also built by Schneider et Cie in the years 1858–1862 . The steel girders of the bridge were made in France and brought to the construction site by ship and the now built railway. The sinking of a ship and the necessary delivery of new parts led to considerable delays. Lastarria died in mid-1888 and Eduardo Vigneaux took over the supervision of the further work. The superstructure was installed next to the valley and then pushed in . The bridge was inaugurated on October 26, 1890 by President José Manuel Balmaceda .

A model of the bridge was exhibited at the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 and the 1900 Paris Exposition .

On November 25, 1990, the Malleco Viaduct was declared a monument. In 1994 it was added to the List of International Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks by the American Society of Civil Engineers . It is also included in the UNESCO tentative list as a prerequisite for recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

The Chilean Post has issued a double stamp with the bridge in its original shape on one stamp and the reinforced shape on the other.

A modern Panamericana motorway bridge is around a hundred meters from the Malleco Viaduct .

Web links

Commons : Malleco Viaduct  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pont sur le Rio de Malecco . In: Congrès international des procédés de construction in Paris from September 9-14 , 1889, pp. 48, 49
  2. ↑ Santiago Marín Vicuña: Estudios de los ferrocarriles chilenos . Imprenta Cervantes, Santiago de Chile 1901, p. 100-102 ( gob.cl ).
  3. ^ AF Noguès: Le Viaduc du Malleco. In: La Nature , Volume 19, Issue 1, 1891, pp. 93-94
  4. ↑ Photo from insertion on Highestbridges.com
  5. ↑ Viaduc du Malleco on artsandculture.google.com
The Tren de la Araucanía on the Malleco Viaduct