Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke

Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 6 ″  N , 16 ° 26 ′ 39 ″  E

Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke
The Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke over the New Danube (2014)
use	Railway bridge
Crossing of	Danube
place	Vienna
overall length	379.50 + 338 meters
location

First Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke under construction. You can see the stem for inserting the bridge.

Stadlauer Staatsbahnbrücke in 1875

Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke crossing the Danube

The Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke , also known as Stadlauer Brücke , is a railway bridge in Vienna . It connects the districts of Leopoldstadt and Donaustadt and crosses the Danube , Danube Island and New Danube . It is the longest existing bridge over the Danube in Vienna.

history

1868-1931

In addition to the Kaiser-Ferdinands-Nordbahnbrücke , which had existed since 1837/1838 , a single-track railway bridge over the Danube to the east was approved in 1866.

Since there were still many uncertainties about the upcoming Viennese Danube regulation , for example the width of the river bed and the inundation area, it was decided to only close a five-span river bridge with a total length of 398 meters and an inundation bridge with 10 openings (9 stone pillars) and a further 360 meters erect. Until the points still in question have been finally clarified, additional temporary wooden structures should enable traffic across the bridge. The supporting structure of the river bridge consisted of five parallel trusses made of welded iron with a nine-fold network with a clear width of 75.9 m each.

As a result of this procedure, after the completion of the Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke and the Danube regulation, the situation came about that the last electricity field was already over the foreland. The flood bridge over the flood plain was finally built as a ten-span structure with a span of around 32 meters.

The French companies Schneider & Comp received the order to build the 758 meter long bridge structure . and "Castor & Comp." The bridge builder János Feketeházy , who later worked in Hungary and planned numerous bridges there, worked as an intern on the project .

First of all, the iron girders of the first three bridges were assembled on the right bank and then pushed forward by means of pulleys and pulleys with human strength. With a 512-fold translation , the feed rate was approximately four meters per hour. The sagging of the end of the bridge was compensated for by an upwardly curved beak with a length of 31.46 meters, so that the bridge had to rest on the next bridge pillar.

Work on inserting the bridge began on May 2, 1870. On May 4th the beak reached the first pillar of the bridge. Due to damage to this beak, however, the bridge had to be withdrawn from May 7th. After the repair and reinforcement of this auxiliary structure, which took place between May 8th and 13th, the feed could be started again on May 14th. After a rest day on May 19, the bridge was moved the last missing piece on May 20, on the occasion of a visit by Emperor Franz Joseph I , so that it rested on the second river pillar. Subsequently, the insertion work was temporarily suspended in order to be able to assemble the two missing bridge fields.

Between August 17 and September 6, 1870, the bridge was finally pushed in completely. After all the assembly work on the electricity and inundation bridges had been completed, commission-based testing of the new bridge began on November 7, 1870 using 32 locomotives. The first Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke, at that time still under the name Stadlauer Staatsbahnbrücke , was completed. It was officially opened on November 24, 1870.

Since 1931

The increasing weight of the railroad trains and an incipient structural change in the welding iron used , which brought with it a tendency towards cold cracking, made the new bridge necessary.

Waagner Biro was responsible for both the design of the new bridge and the steelwork . The new Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke was built to the side of the existing bridge and then pushed in. The work was completed in 1932.

In April 1945, during the Battle of Vienna, all of Vienna's Danube bridges, with the exception of the Reichsbrücke, were blown up by the retreating German units . In contrast to the other bridges that were blown up, the heavily damaged Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke did not have to be completely rebuilt, but could be repaired again. The Eastern Railway was of great importance for the supply of Vienna with grain from the Marchfeld. After the end of the war, the rubble of the destroyed Vienna Danube bridges was salvaged to make the Danube navigable again. At the end of 1945, Waagner Biro began repairing the Ostbahnbrücke, for which around 900 tons of new steel structures were required. Since the collapse of the Reichsbrücke on August 1, 1976, the Ostbahnbrücke has been the oldest Danube bridge in Vienna.

In 1995, on the occasion of the construction of the Freudenau power plant, the Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke had to be raised by 4.5 meters in order to maintain the clearance height required for shipping.

literature

• Alfred Pauser: Bridges in Vienna - A guide through building history , Springer Verlag, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-211-25255-X
• Journal of the Austrian Association of Engineers and Architects , Vienna, 1871

Web links

Commons : Stadlauer Ostbahnbrücke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Technical University of Vienna, Institute for Steel Construction: Ramberger and Aigner: Danube bridges in Vienna, history, construction, special features ( memorial from September 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Karl Zillinger: Vienna-Donaustadt . Sutton Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86680-451-7 , p. 62.
2. ^ The Soviet Union helps the Austrian people. In:  Niederösterreichischer Grenzbote / Niederösterreichischer Grenzbote. Illustrated Sunday paper / Lower Austrian border messenger. End of work / border messenger. Weekly newspaper for the district of Bruck an der Leitha , December 16, 1945, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).
3. ↑ All eight Viennese bridges ready in spring. In:  Austrian Volksstimme. Organ / central organ of the Communist Party of Austria , November 4, 1945, p. 3 (online at ANNO ).
4. ^ Leopoldstadt: Die Ostbahnbrücke on mein district.at from October 19, 2013, accessed on February 7, 2017.