Rhine bridge Waldshut – Koblenz
Coordinates: 47 ° 36 ′ 34 " N , 8 ° 14 ′ 3" E ; CH1903: 659 810 / two hundred seventy-three thousand four hundred eighty-four
| Rhine bridge Waldshut – Koblenz | ||
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| Convicted | Turgi – Koblenz – Waldshut railway line | |
| Crossing of | Rhine , km 102 | |
| place | Waldshut , Koblenz AG | |
| construction | Lattice girder bridge | |
| overall length | 190 m | |
| Longest span | 54.9 m | |
| Construction height | 5.1 m | |
| building-costs | 484,210 guilders | |
| start of building | 1858 | |
| completion | August 18, 1859 | |
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The Rhine bridge Waldshut – Koblenz is a single-track railway overpass on the Waldshut – Turgi line , which spans the Rhine between the stations of Waldshut and Koblenz AG , which forms the border between Germany and Switzerland . It was the first railway bridge between the Grand Duchy of Baden and Switzerland. It is the only major railway bridge over the Rhine that has been completely preserved to this day and is one of the rare lattice girder bridges in Europe in its original state. The structure is threatened with demolition because DB Netz wants to replace it with a new building.
history
On August 26, 1857, the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways agreed with the Swiss Northeast Railway to build the cross-border Turgi – Koblenz – Waldshut railway with the Rhine bridge. When it was commissioned on August 18, 1859, it was the first connection between the Baden main line and the Swiss railway network. The connecting line in Basel was not put into operation until 14 years later. The Baden building officer Robert Gerwig designed the structure and was in charge of the construction management of the bridge work. The steel superstructure was supplied and installed by the Benckiser brothers from Pforzheim . The bridge was designed for two tracks, but only one track was ever available. Due to increasing traffic loads, the first reinforcement measures for axle weights of 18 tons followed in 1912 and 1913, and the upstream track was moved to the center of the bridge.
Because of the previous trade in Neuchâtel , at the height of which the Prussian army planned to invade Switzerland over a pontoon bridge between Waldshut and Koblenz, an explosive chamber was built into one of the bridge piers on the Swiss side. After it became known, the Baden side followed suit with the installation of its own explosive chamber. On the Swiss side, the TNT assembly was removed in 2014. Non-governmental organizations also planned to blow up the bridge. In 1912 a Serbian anarchist cell was arrested in Basel who had already made a gasoline acid bomb to blow up the Waldshut-Koblenz bridge over the Rhine. The group intended to blow up the bridge when the German Reich entered the First Balkan War under the first transport of troops. The last planned demolition of the bridge by German units for April 24, 1945 was not carried out either, which means that the building has been preserved in its original construction as a technical monument.
In 1967 a speed limit of 10 km / h was set up on the bridge due to the age of the bridge and safety concerns . A report from the University of Karlsruhe in 1974 gave the building a remaining useful life of 10 to 15 years, provided that new corrosion protection was carried out, which also happened in 1978. Ten years later, the Deutsche Bundesbahn wanted to shut down the line, but the Swiss Federal Railways , which own half of the bridge, refused to give their consent and requested an updated report on the bridge. This was followed by extensive repair work carried out in 1991, which included, among other things, local reinforcement measures and renewed corrosion protection and enabled passenger trains to travel at a top speed of 45 km / h and gave the bridge a remaining useful life of 40 years. Up until the electrification of the Waldshut – Koblenz gap in 1999, local diesel railcars operated by Deutsche Bahn operated on the bridge. From 1999, the SBB took over the management of electric railcars. In 2007 around 34 trains on line 41 Waldshut – Winterthur of the Zurich S-Bahn ran over the building every day .
The Rhine bridge no longer seemed suitable for the use of heavy domino trains planned from December 11, 2011 . Negotiations between the city of Waldshut and the Waldshut District Office with Deutsche Bahn and the Swiss Federal Railways led to a compromise solution in November 2011. The speed of domino moves in the area of the bridge is limited to 30 km / h. Passengers are only allowed to stay in the lighter parts of the train during the crossing.
construction
The approximately 190 m long bridge has an overhead track and spans of 37.24 m across the Rhine in the two peripheral fields and 54.90 m in the middle field. This is followed by a brick viaduct with six semicircular arches, each with a clear width of 7.5 m, on the Swiss bank. The widely differing spans of the main bridge resulted from the flow conditions in the Rhine. On the German side, the railway line crosses the federal highway 34 / Europastraße 54 on a modern concrete bridge with an arch after about 50 m on a dam .
The superstructure of the close-meshed lattice girder bridge consists of puddle iron and has a box-shaped cross-section. In the longitudinal direction, the continuous beam is the building system. There are two vertically close-meshed, grid-like main girders with a height of 5.13 m and a center distance of 4.95 m. The diagonal struts are made of flat iron and riveted together at the crossing points. The vertical posts consist of four riveted angle profiles.
The foundation of the pillars consists of rammed, approximately 10 m long wooden piles on which pile head foundations made of concrete are arranged. The 14 m high and at the top 3 m wide pillars are made of natural stone masonry.
Assembly
On the Waldshuter Ufer, the superstructure of the river bridge was assembled in three sections in a temporary workshop. After completion of the first segment, it was pushed out of the hall on rollers. This was followed by the second segment, which was connected to the first and moved after completion. Finally, the superstructure with the third segment was assembled over its entire length of 131 m. The actual assembly of the bridge was carried out with auxiliary yokes in the Rhine by pushing a 10.5 m long, wooden protruding nose onto a taxiway. The superstructure was moved forward with human power on engines with rollers.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railway Rhine bridges in Germany . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-689-7 , p. 27.
- ^ Frank Peter Jäger: Export Article Monument Preservation . In: TEC21 . No. 16 , 2015, p. 16-18 .
- ↑ Bahn wants to replace historic building in Waldshut. Badische Zeitung, October 31, 2017, accessed on October 31, 2017 .
- ↑ Disarmament of explosives: Switzerland removes TNT from bridge to Germany. In: Der Spiegel , accessed on November 18, 2014.
- ↑ Erhard Buchner: War documents, the world war 1914 in the representation of the contemporary press. Albert Langen, Munich, 1914-18, Volume 2, p. 136.
- ↑ SBB continues over the bridge. Südkurier from November 17, 2011
literature
- Ulrich Boeyng: The railway bridge over the Rhine between Waldshut and Koblenz. A monument to the history of technology . In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg , 19th year 1990, issue 3, pp. 135–140. ( PDF file, 1 MB )
- Ulrich Boeyng: 150 years of the railway bridge over the Rhine near Waldshut. For the anniversary of the first international rail link. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg, 38th year 2009, issue 3, pp. 153–156. ( PDF file, 283 kB )
- Ulrich Boeyng: Treasure finds on the archive shelf: early photographs from the construction period of the Rhine bridge near Waldshut . In: Monument Preservation in Baden-Württemberg, 43rd year 2014, issue 3, pp. 200–202. ( PDF file ).
- Robert Gerwig: The railway bridge over the Rhine near Waldshut. In: Allgemeine Bauzeitung , year 1862, pp. 243-257 (online at ANNO ). .
- Society for civil engineering (ed.): Swiss railway bridges . 1st edition. vdf Hochschulverlag, Zurich 2001. ISBN 978-3-7281-2786-0 .
- Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railway Rhine bridges in Germany . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2003, ISBN 3-88255-689-7 .
- Jörg Schlaich, Matthias Schüller: Engineering manager Baden-Württemberg . Bauwerk Verlag, Berlin 1999. ISBN 3-934369-01-4 .
Web links
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The next bridge up the river: Rheinbrücke Zurzach – Rheinheim |
Bridges over the Rhine |
The next bridge downstream: Waldshut – Koblenz road bridge |