Puente de Tajo and Puente Almonte (N-630)
Coordinates: 39 ° 43 '5 " N , 6 ° 26' 57" W.
| Puente de Tajo Puente Almonte |
||
|---|---|---|
| Convicted |
 , Madrid – Lisbon railway line
|
|
| Crossing of |
Tajo (Alcántara Reservoir) Río Almonte (Alcántara Reservoir) |
|
| place | near Cáceres , Extremadura | |
| construction | Prestressed concrete - box girder bridges | |
| overall length | 340 m; 307.5 m | |
| width | 10.5 m | |
| Longest span | 85 m | |
| start of building | 1965 | |
| completion | 1968 | |
| planner | Dywidag | |
| location | ||
|
||
The Puente de Tajo and the Puente Almonte are two largely identical double-decker bridges over the arms of the Alcántara reservoir near Cáceres , Extremadura , in which the Tajo and the Río Almonte used to flow.
They lead the N-630 Gijón - Salamanca -Cáceres- Seville on the deck and the Madrid - Lisbon railway line in the box girder below over the arms of the reservoir.
The prestressed concrete bridges built from 1965 to 1968 held the world record for railway bridges made of prestressed concrete with the spans of their central span of 85 m .
Surname
Today the bridges are simply named after the names of the former rivers crossed. Originally they were called Puente de Alconetar and Puente de la Plata , based on the history . At that time, the remains of the Roman Puente de Alconétar were not yet given this simplistic name. Years were to pass before the further east running Autovía A-66 Ruta de la Plata with the Alconétar viaduct or the Lisbon – Madrid high-speed line with the Tajo railway bridge and the Almonte railway bridge in the immediate vicinity.
history
The Roman Alconétar Bridge carried the Via de la Plata , the most important north-south connection in western Hispania , across the Tagus. After the bridge and road fell into disrepair in the Middle Ages , the river was crossed by ferries for centuries . Various plans to rebuild the bridge came to nothing.
The first modern bridge in this area was the railway bridge that Gustave Eiffel had built between 1880 and 1881 for the Madrid – Lisbon route. It was a single-track, 367 m long bridge with an overhead track. Its 8 fields were 37.72 + 6 × 48.51 + 37.72 m long and consisted of a 5.40 m high and 5.5 m wide wrought iron truss construction , which was still clearly reminiscent of lattice girders .
The first road bridge at this point, with which the N-630 crossed the Tagus, was not built until 1927. It was a 357.75 m long reinforced concrete bridge with 12 parabolic double arches with elevated roadway. Their arches had spans of 27.20 m, which were 2.85 m thick over the 11 short pillars.
The iron railway bridge was no longer able to withstand the strains of the heavier locomotives and trains. It was replaced in 1932 by an arch bridge with 15 arches made of reinforced concrete. The iron structure of the old bridge was dismantled; its straight pillars were still visible until the reservoir was flooded.
In the early 1960s, the Hidroeléctrica Española (now Iberdrola ) began the preparatory work for the approximately 70 km long Alcántara reservoir, which provided for the construction of a number of roads and bridges. This included the relocation of the Roman Bridge and the construction of the Puente de Alconetar and the Puente de la Plata , two double-deck bridges for the N-630 and the railway line.
description
The Puente de Tajo ( ) is 340 m long. It has 7 fields with spans of 12.5 + 50.0 + 65.0 + 85.0 + 65.0 + 50.0 + 12.5 m.
The Puente Almonte ( ), 3.3 km further south-west, is 307.5 m long. Their 7 fields also have spans of 12.5 + 50.0 + 65.0 + 85.0 + 48.5 + 36.5 + 10.0 m.
The pillars of both bridges are made of reinforced concrete with a uniform "double T" cross-section. Their height varies between 24.0 m and 59.9 m.
Both bridges are 10.5 m wide. Its deck is divided into an 8.5 m wide two-lane carriageway and two 1.0 m wide sidewalks, which are now somewhat narrowed by the guardrails that were installed later - but there are few pedestrians in this lonely area.
The carriageway slab is also the cover slab of the 6.5 m wide and 7.9 m high prestressed concrete hollow box in which the railway track runs.
The bridges were from both sides of the cantilever built. The first field was supported with auxiliary piers, then the cantilever was braced with auxiliary pylons on the piers.
The design of the bridges was created in the Dywidag design office under the direction of Ulrich Finsterwalder , and they were carried out by a consortium from the companies Dywidag, Beton- und Monierbau , Caminos y Puertos and Edificios y Obras.
Individual evidence
- ↑ See map in ide extremadura , the geoportal of Extremadura
- ↑ a b c d Puentes sobre los ríos Tajo y Almonte . In: E. Rheinecker: puentes pretensados, en voladizo libre, construidos por el sistema Dywidag. In: Hormigon y acero 90 , 1st quarter 1969, No. 90, Volume 20, pp. 34–44 (digital 37–47) (PDF; 15.7 MB)
- ↑ Bridge over the Tagus River at the Alcántara Reservoir on cfcsl.com
- ^ Colin O'Connor: Roman Bridges . Cambridge University Press 1993, ISBN 0-521-39326-4 , p. 20
- ↑ a b P. Plasencia-Lozano: El puente sobre el Tajo de Eiffel en España. In: Informes de la Construcción , Vol 70, No 551 (2018) (PDF; 35.8 MB)
- ↑ a b Antiguo puente sobre el Tajo en la N-630 on alkonetara.org
- ↑ Manuel Castillo Rubio, Nicolás Navalón García: Presa de Alcántara. In: Revista de Obras Públicas , 1967, 115, tomo I (3028): pp. 871–888 (PDF; 6 MB)