Rhine bridge Kehl

Coordinates: 48 ° 34 ′ 32 ″  N , 7 ° 48 ′ 3 ″  E

Rhine bridge Kehl
Bridge 2015
Convicted	Europabahn , km 13.9
Subjugated	Rhine , km 293.7
place	Kehl , Strasbourg
construction	Steel truss bridge
overall length	238.4 m
width	12.5 m
Longest span	131.12 m
Construction height	12.2 m
start of building	2008
completion	2010
location

The Rheinbrücke Kehl is a railway bridge that spans the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg and the border between Germany and France . It belongs to the Appenweier – Strasbourg railway , which is also known as the Europabahn . In 2010 a new, two-track structure was put into operation, replacing the single-track bridge from 1956 . The original bridge structure from 1861 was also double-track and was destroyed in World War II.

Bridge from 1861

Starting position

The Grand Duchy of Baden and the French Empire agreed on September 16, 1857 in a state treaty to build a railway bridge over the Rhine. The design of the double-track bridge was approved on June 2, 1858.

Financing and construction also took into account the location of the border bridge between Baden and France. The financing was shared between the Chemin de Fer de l'Est (French Eastern Railway Company) and the Baden State Railway , with the French building the foundation and the Baden side building the superstructure. With regard to the construction, it was agreed that a swing bridge would be installed at both ends of the structure , which would enable the route to be interrupted immediately in the event of war .

construction

Engines for pre-rolling the superstructure of the power bridge

Construction work began on October 1, 1858. Iron caissons were used to found the pillars at a depth of 18 m under the river bed . The process developed by engineers Vuignier and Fleur Saint-Denis and used here for the first time met with great interest in the professional world. A pipe that was open at the top and bottom was used to transport the excavation away and was hermetically sealed from the caisson, in which the water level was lowered by increased air pressure. The river water in the pipe was also prevented from leaking. A bucket chain hoist continuously lifted the excavated material out of the caisson and through the pipe. The French side finished their work on December 24, 1859.

The Benckiser brothers from Pforzheim supplied and installed the wrought iron superstructures for the Baden State Railways . On the Strasbourg bank, 450 m away from the Rhine, the superstructure of the river bridge with a weight of 1000 t was assembled over its entire length. The assembly was carried out by pushing a 21 m long front nose onto a runway. Since the machine drives failed, the superstructure was moved forward with human power on engines for pre-rolling at 6 m per hour. The work was completed on September 22, 1860, the bridge was opened on May 11, 1861. At that time it was the only permanent bridge on the Upper Rhine .

Building

Technical parameters

The structure was 235 m long and consisted in the middle of a 177 m long and 6 m high lattice girder bridge with three openings with 59 m span each. At each end there was a 26 m long swing bridge. Overall, the bridge was 12 m wide, including the two 1.2 m wide walkways outside the lattice girders. The outer pillars were 4.5 m wide, the two central pillars 3.0 m wide.

layout

First railway bridge over the Rhine

The entrance to the lattice girder was decorated on both sides by tall, cast-iron double portals in neo-Gothic style, flanked by tall, narrow towers. On the Kehler side there were cast iron figures of father Rhein (by Hans Baur ) and mother Kinzig (by Franz Xaver Reich ) in the tower niches , on the Strasbourg side figures of "Mère Jll" (mother Jll ) and "Père Rhin" were accordingly .

Two wars and the consequences

When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870, the swing bridge on the Kehler side was not removed, but blown up by the military . By November 1870, the gap was closed again with a provisional wooden construction and this was in turn replaced in 1875 by a permanently mounted solid wall beam. On this occasion the portal construction was also renewed.

Between 1871 and 1919, the bridge was owned by the German Empire , which now joined the Reichseisenbahnen in Alsace-Lorraine at its western end . After 1900, a special type of ship, the so-called Basel driver , was developed and a new bridge was planned , mainly because of the low clearance height of the bridge for the large paddle steam tugs . But this did not happen because of the outbreak of war in 1914.

After the end of the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles , the bridge crossed the German-French border again. It now belonged to France in full. Plans for a new construction of the now more than 75-year-old bridge failed in 1937 when the Second World War broke out .

Second World War and the aftermath

After the declaration of war on the German Reich on September 3, 1939, the French simply turned off the swing bridge that had remained on their side. On May 14, 1940, French pioneers blew up the western pillar of the river, destroying the swing bridge and damaging the lattice girder. The Wehrmacht , which was initially victorious, repaired the gap with a wooden construction, and train traffic to the now occupied France was possible again from September 1940. This makeshift was replaced in 1941 by a double-track bridge. This now consisted of (from east to west)

• the solid wall girder from 1875,
• the still usable part of the lattice girder from 1860,
• a 30 m long new solid wall girder (1941) and
• a 60 m long SKR girder .

Allied troops reached Strasbourg on November 23, 1944. German troops blew up one of the central river pillars, completely destroying the superstructure. In July 1945, American engineer units erected a single-track temporary bridge with seven openings and spans of up to 59.75 m.

Bridge from 1956

On January 30, 1953, the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic signed a first agreement on fixed bridges and ferries across the Rhine on the Franco-German border . Among other things, the new construction of the Rhine bridge near Kehl was agreed for rail traffic. Germany had to bear the total costs for the planned double-track Rhine crossing. Two separate superstructures for one track each were planned. The second superstructure, however, was not built, only the abutments and pillars were made correspondingly wide.

Postless strut truss bridge with an underlying carriageway

In May 1954, construction work began on the new railway bridge. It was a three-span postless strut truss bridge made of steel, with the continuous girder as a structural system in the longitudinal direction. The spans of the 238.4 m long structure were 74.43 m - 74.43 m - 89.54 m from the eastern abutment. The framework with parallel belts and the roadway below had a node spacing of 8.14 m in the short fields and 8.27 m in the long field with the shipping opening. The system height of the truss was 8.0 m, the main girder center distance was 5.0 m. The wooden sleepers were mounted directly on two continuous longitudinal girders. There was an overall height of 1.40 m between the upper edge of the rail and the lower edge of the construction.

The two abutments and an eastern pillar of the previous bridge were reused. A new foundation at a depth of 18 m below the river bed was made with a reinforced concrete caisson at the western pillar at a distance of 15 m from the damaged pillar of the old bridge. The new brake pillar is 8.0 m wide and 12.0 m long. The superstructure was assembled on the right bank of the Rhine and inserted in sections via an auxiliary pillar 28 m from the Kehler bank. Since the construction was raised by 2.60 m in May 1966, the clearance above the highest navigable water level was 6.85 m.

The bridge was inaugurated on August 12, 1956. The state border was in the middle of the bridge, which meant that half of the bridge belonged to one of the two neighboring states.

Bridge from 2010

preparation

Construction site sign in front of the old and new bridge

Driveway to the old and new bridge

At the La Rochelle meeting in 1992, a new double-track replacement bridge was on the agenda. The financing of the project, however, was a long time coming.

On March 14, 2006, the German and French Transport Ministers, Tiefensee and Perben, signed the State Treaty on the new Rhine bridge. Germany should take over three quarters of the planned costs of 23 million euros. The uneven distribution of costs goes back to the agreement of January 30, 1953. According to this, Germany originally had to bear the costs of the later unrealized construction of the second single-track superstructure. The additional costs as a result of a significant improvement in quality compared to the old structure were borne jointly by the two countries.

The contract also stipulated the planning and structural regulations for expanding the section between Strasbourg and Kehl with the Rhine crossing for a speed of 160 km / h in the course of the high-speed line Paris – Eastern France – Southwest Germany . The plans included a replacement new building with a double-track railway overpass.

The hearing procedure at the regional council of Freiburg was completed at the end of March 2007, and the planning approval decision was passed on June 27 by the Federal Railway Authority . A total of 125 objections were raised . The construction work on the Kehl bridge and the expansion of the 14 km long stretch to Appenweier began on March 31, 2008. On October 10, 2010, the structure was in its final position.

Technical parameters

The bridge construction is a two-span postless parallel chord framework made of steel with spans of 107.28 m and 131.12 m with a total construction height of 12.2 m and a width of 12.5 m. The construction of the superstructure hollow box takes place via a horizontal wind bracing in the upper chord and the carriageway sheet as an orthotropic plate in the lower chord level. The bridge only has one new central pillar, founded on piles, the two old river piers were dismantled. To minimize the difference in height between the upper edge of the rail and the lower edge of the bridge, a slab track was installed on the bridge with a track spacing of 4.0 m. The clearance above the highest navigable water level is at least 7.0 m. A navigation opening with a clear width of 92 m is available for the descent, and 60 m for the ascent. In order to avoid disturbance of the radar navigation by decoy targets , the truss diagonals are inclined by 5 ° inwards.

construction

The steel superstructure with a mass of 3000 tons was delivered in individual parts by truck and welded together at a pre-assembly area on the Strasbourg bank to form 24 m long and 90 tons heavy truss girders. The segments were lifted to the already constructed bridge section with crawler cranes , then the bridge was welded on and pushed in over auxiliary piers in five steps towards the east. On October 22, 2009, after six months of installation, the new railway bridge reached the German bank. From November 2009 to February 2010 the track support plates were installed and from mid-March the train traffic was directed over the single-track bridge. The next step in March was the dismantling of the old bridge in four parts with a ship crane and dismantling on the Kehler Ufer for removal by truck. After the partial renewal of the abutments, the railway line was closed from August 28 to October 10, 2010 and the new bridge superstructure was moved 8 m upstream and the final connection to the existing rails was established.

literature

• JG Schwedler, Hipp: The construction of the Rhine bridge near Kehl. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume X, 1860, Columns 7–46
• Corresponding plan sketches. In: Atlas zur Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume X, 1860, Sheet 5 (1) –7
• Addendum to the essay by JG Schwedler and Hipp on the construction of the Rhine bridge near Kehl. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume XI, 1861, Column 181–184
• The foundation work on the Rhine bridge between Strasbourg and Kehl. :  Allgemeine Bauzeitung , year 1861, pp. 102-108, plan drawings, sheets 415, 416 (online at ANNO ).
• The foundation work for the Rhine bridge between Strasbourg and Kehl. :  Allgemeine Bauzeitung , year 1859, notepad, pp. 299–303 (online at ANNO ).
• Travaux du pont de Kehl. In: Nouvelles annales de la construction: publication rapide et économique des documents les plus récents et les plus intéressants relatifs à la construction française et étrangère ... , year 1859, column 18 ( digitized on Gallica )
• CA Oppermann: Travaux du pont du Rhin à Kehl. In: Nouvelles annales de la construction: publication rapide et économique des documents les plus récents et les plus intéressants relatifs à la construction française et étrangère ... , 5th year, October 1859, column 155–160; Plan drawings, pages 41–42 43–44 full text in the Google book search
• Inauguration du pont de Kehl sur le Rhin. In: Nouvelles annales de la construction: publication rapide et économique des documents les plus récents et les plus intéressants relatifs à la construction française et étrangère ... , 7th year, May 1861, column 66 ( digitized on Gallica )
• Auguste Perdonnet: Traité élémentaire des chemins de fer . 3. Edition. tape 1 . Garnier Fréres, Paris 1865, p. 500–502 ( full text in Google Book Search).
• O. Emmerich, Brandel: The railway bridge over the Rhine between Kehl and Strasbourg . In: Der Stahlbau , Volume 26, Issue 6, 1957, pp. 160–166, 191–195.
• Hans Pottgießer: Railway bridges from two centuries . Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1985. ISBN 3-7643-1677-2
• DB ProjektBau GmbH (Ed.): Infrastructure projects 2010. Construction at Deutsche Bahn . Eurailpress-Verlag, Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7771-0414-0 , pp. 94-109.
• Ulrich Boeyng: The Baden Rhine bridges - the end of the Second World War 75 years ago . Part 1: The destruction of the Rhine bridges between Neienburg and Wintersdorf , In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg 2020/2, pp. 87-94.

Web links

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

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} J.G. Schwedler, Hipp: The construction of the Rhine bridge near Kehl. In: Zeitschrift für Bauwesen , Volume X, 1860, Columns 7–46
2. ↑ Travaux du pont de Kehl. In: Nouvelles annales de la construction: publication rapide et économique des documents les plus récents et les plus intéressants relatifs à la construction française et étrangère ... , year 1859, column 18 ( digitized on Gallica )
3. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
4. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
5. ^ Inauguration du pont de Kehl sur le Rhin. In: Nouvelles annales de la construction: publication rapide et économique des documents les plus récents et les plus intéressants relatifs à la construction française et étrangère ... , 7th year, May 1861, column 66 ( digitized on Gallica )
6. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
7. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
8. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
9. ↑ Thomas Cathiau: Hans Baur in: Friedrich von Weech (Ed.): Badische Biographien , V. Theil , 1906.
10. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
11. ↑ Boeyng, p. 88.
12. ↑ Boeyng, p. 89.
13. ↑ Boeyng, p. 89.
14. ^ ^{A b} Report on the State Treaty for the Rhine Bridge . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International . Issue 5/2006, ISSN  1421-2811 , p. 210.
15. ↑ Law on the agreement of March 14, 2006 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the construction of a railway bridge over the Rhine near Kehl .
16. ↑ Law on the agreement of March 14, 2006 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic on the construction of a railway bridge over the Rhine near Kehl; dated January 15, 2007, promulgated January 19, 2007; BGBl. II S. 2
17. ^ Deutsche Bahn AG: Construction work on the New Rhine Bridge near Kehl begins . Press release from March 26, 2008
18. ↑ VBR-Online: Bahnaktuell, Current News, October 8, 2010
19. ↑ ingenieurgruppe-bauen.de: Bridge data ( memento of the original from January 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 247 kB) 
20. ↑ Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, autumn meeting 2005: Annex to Protocol 11

The next bridge upstream: Beatus-Rhenanus-Brücke

Bridges over the Rhine

The next bridge downstream: Rheinau-Gambsheim barrage