Ruhr Bridge Steele

Coordinates: 51 ° 26 ′ 33 "  N , 7 ° 4 ′ 52"  E

Ruhr Bridge Steele
Official name	Ruhr Bridge Steele
use	Railway bridge
Convicted	Essen-Überruhr – Bochum-Langendreer railway line
Crossing of	Dysentery
place	Eat , Steele
construction	Strombrücke: steel truss bridge Flood bridge: arch bridge
overall length	River bridge: 125 m, flood bridge: 130 m
Longest span	4 × 27.3 m (current bridge)
start of building	August 1861
completion	1863
opening	June 1, 1863
location
Above sea level	58  m

The Ruhr Bridge Steele is a railway bridge between the present-day Essen districts Steele and Überruhr . It has been extending the Wuppertal – Essen-Überruhr railway line of the former Prince Wilhelm Railway since 1863 at river kilometer 44 across the Ruhr to Steele. Blown up in the Second World War , it was rebuilt in different ways.

history

The emergence of mining in the Ruhr and the need for coal in the Bergisches Land prompted the establishment of an economical means of transport in the 19th century. In 1840 , the Prinz Wilhelm Railway Company (PWE for short) decided to expand the horse-drawn tramway it had built ten years earlier. From the summer of 1844 the connection from Steele via Langenberg to Elberfeld was built . It was mainly used for freight traffic but also for passenger transport. At Überruhr , the route on the Ruhr ended where the Ruhr Bridge was built from 1861. Instead of this, there was a ferry from the terminus called Steele across from the northern bank of the Ruhr. At the provisional terminus at Steele opposite , which went into operation in 1847 when the route was switched to steam, there was a turntable for turning the steam locomotives.

Due to financial problems, the Prinz-Wilhelm-Eisenbahn was contracted to the state on March 27, 1854. On June 1, 1863, the Ruhr Bridge was opened near the then town of Steele. And on August 23 of that year, the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BME for short) legally took over the route of the former Prince Wilhelm Railway, which it had operated since 1854.

With the opening of the Ruhr Bridge Steele, the economically important connection to the section of the Dortmund – Duisburg railway line opened by the BME at Königssteele station (at times also called Steele Hbf, Steele Nord or Essen-Steele, today Essen-Steele Ost) was given . From there, the former Prince Wilhelm Railway was now also connected to the route to Bochum-Dahlhausen, which is important for Ruhr mining, from September 21, 1863 .

On February 1, 1978, the elevated connecting curve from the Ruhr Bridge to the Essen-Steele West train station (now Essen-Steele) was opened. This shortened the route from Wuppertal to Essen, because previously all trains on this route had to turn heads at Steele Ost station . After the local transport line N9 served the not yet electrified route, the S-Bahn line S9 has been running since the end of 2003 and the regional express line RE 49 has been running over the Ruhr Bridge since the end of 2019 . This has no effect on capacity, as the frequency of the S-Bahn has been reduced to a half-hourly rhythm. The existing old track from the Ruhr Bridge to Steele Ost station has now been decommissioned.

Building

The former two-track ensemble of the Ruhr Bridge Steele consists of two bridges that are connected by an approximately 270-meter-long dam. One is the Strombrücke over the Ruhr, a riveted truss steel bridge that is led over three stone pillars. This creates four fields with a span of 27.3 meters each, whereby today the Ruhr flows through three fields and Langenberger Straße runs through the southern field. The Cölnische Maschinenbau AG, founded in 1856, played a key role in its construction . The pillars were erected in November 1862, so that the superstructure could be completed in mid-January 1863.

After Überruhr-Hinsel to himself the flood bridge connects one with Ruhr sandstone -clad bridge over a frequently flooded at high tide then Aue leads, which today is used for drinking water. The necessary embankment, which connects the flood and river bridges, began in August 1861, so that this section was completed in October 1862.

In April 1863 the tracks were laid over both structures, whereupon the load-bearing capacity was tested with two heavy locomotives in May of that year. On June 1, 1863, rail traffic over the Ruhr went into operation.

In 1890, a floating crane that had been loosened from its anchoring wedged itself into the northern stone arches of the flood bridge, which was badly damaged and replaced by steel superstructures that can still be seen today. Today this flood bridge still has six stone arches.

Shortly before the end of the Second World War, on April 8, 1945, the original, double-track bridge was blown up by Germans . The next day the Americans marched into Steele. After the war it was replaced by a single-track steel truss bridge on the eastern side of the old pillars. Nothing has changed to this day.

photos

• 

  Flood bridge with the S9 S-Bahn ( class 422 )

• 

  Bridge piers of today's single-track river bridge

• 

  Flood bridge, on the left six original arches, on the right the steel replacement after the accident of 1890

• 

  Steel replacement after the accident of 1890

See also

• List of Ruhr bridges

literature

• Christoph Schmitz: The Ruhr bridges . Ardey Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-87023-311-7 . , Pages 414 to 416
• Johann Rainer Busch, Hans Günter Deilmann: Prince Wilhelm Railway - The first railway stock company on German soil . Essen 1992.

Web links

Commons : Ruhrbrücke Steele  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Description of this sight on the route of industrial culturehttp: //vorlage.rik.test/~15~11545
• Ruhr Bridge Steele. In: Structurae - Bridge before World War II
• Ruhr Bridge Steele. In: Structurae - Bridge Today

Individual evidence

1. ^ Steeler Bürgerschaft e. V. - Steeler Chronik ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.