Viaduc de la Bouble

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Coordinates: 46 ° 13 ′ 27 ″  N , 2 ° 56 ′ 49 ″  E

Viaduc de la Bouble
BW
use Railway bridge
Convicted Route from Commentry to Gannat
Crossing of Bouble
construction Lattice girder bridge
overall length 395 m
width 4 m
Number of openings six
Longest span 50 m
height 66 m
start of building 1868
opening 1871
planner Wilhelm Nordling
location
Viaduc de la Bouble (France)
Viaduc de la Bouble

The Viaduc de la Bouble is a railway viaduct on the route from Commentry to Gannat in the Allier department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region . As a further development of the Viaduc de Busseau , it set standards for the subsequent construction of iron bridges, at least for the bridges built by French companies all over Europe.

The route from Commentry to Gannat

The route begins with two lanes in Commentry and leads over the Viaduc du Soleil with a long row of arches made of masonry and the Viaduc des Balladiers, which is also built . In Lapeyrouse-la-Gare , the line splits into the branch that used to lead south via Saint-Eloy-les-Mines to Clermont-Ferrand and the single-lane line from there to Gannat.

The viaducts

The Viaduc de la Bouble is the first and at the same time the largest of the four cast iron and wrought iron viaducts that were built along with the line between 1868 and 1871 on behalf of the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans (PO) . The order of the viaducts on the route coincidentally also corresponds to the order of their size:

Surname length height pier
Viaduc de la Bouble 0395 m 066 m 05
(followed by the brick
Viaduc de la Perrière)		 0125 m 034 m 08th
Viaduc du Bellon 0231 m 048 m 02
Viaduc de Rouzat 0181 m 059 m 02
Viaduc de Neuvial 0160 m 044 m 01

All four viaducts correspond to a uniform pattern that Wilhelm Nördling , as the chief engineer of the railway PO, who has been working in France for a long time, was generally called there, had designed as a further development of the Viaduc de Busseau also planned and recently completed. A carriageway girder made of wrought-iron lattice girders is supported by pillars, which consist of several cast-iron tubes of the same length, mounted on top of one another in levels, stiffened with wrought-iron struts and standing on brick plinths that reach up to the same height.

Nördling had dealt with the Crumlin Viaduct in South Wales , whose pillars consisted of 14 cast-iron columns, and participated in the planning of the first Grandfey Viaduct , which had 12 such pipes per pillar. He himself had reduced the number of pipes at Viaduc de Busseau to 8 and then reduced it to 4 for the four single-track viaducts on the route from Commentry to Gannat. The pipes were stiffened by internal tie rods, which were anchored in the bases and tensioned in the pier heads with screws. In order to be able to better absorb the lateral wind loads, the lower tubes were reinforced with expanded support tubes.

The iron construction of the Viaduc de la Bouble and the Viaduc du Bellon was carried out by the predecessors of the companies Fives-Lille and Etablissement Cail under the direction of Félix Moreaux , who had already built the Viaduc de Busseau. With the Viaduc de Rouzat and the Viaduc de Neuvial, Nördling commissioned Gustave Eiffel , who had just opened his own ironworks in Levallois-Perret near Paris , who had become known to him as the construction manager of the railway bridge over the Garonne in Bordeaux . The construction companies prepared the execution planning, in which they could deviate from his draft planning with Nördling's approval. Eiffel introduced a number of changes that were also adopted in the subsequent bridges.

The Viaduc de la Bouble

Viaduc de la Bouble under construction

The total of 395 m long Viaduc de la Bouble leads the railway at a height of 66.10 m over the river Bouble on the border of the municipal areas of Louroux-de-Bouble and Échassières . The carriageway girder consists of a 300 m long lattice girder which is supported by five iron pillars standing on mighty stone plinths. The pillar spacing is 50 m. On the left high bank the road girder is connected to the route by five brick, 10 m wide round arches, on the right bank there are only two arches with 7 m clear width.

The three middle of the five pillars are uniformly 55.80 m high. Its stone plinth protrudes 1.90 m above the high water mark of the Bouble. The supporting elements of the pillars are four cast iron, 5 m high tubes, which are arranged one above the other on eleven floors and are connected and stiffened by St. Andrew's cross and horizontal struts. The pipes were also filled with concrete . They have an outside diameter of 50 cm, their wall thicknesses decrease from 4.5 cm upwards to 3.0 cm. The pillars have a so-called suit , i. H. their outer edges are slightly inclined inwards, so that the projection of their lines meet at a point 40 m above the tracks. The pillar head is an unadorned 2.50 mx 3.50 m platform on which the bearings of the track girder are mounted. The lower three floors are reinforced by support tubes spread across the roadway.

The roadway girder consists of two 4.54 m high lattice girders, which are arranged at a center distance of 3.5 m, on which the bridge deck is mounted from double T girders. It was installed on a 150 m long construction site on the route above the left bank of the river and pushed 50 m over the valley so that it could be used as a crane for building the piers.

In November 1870, tests were carried out with rolling trains. After an exceptionally cold winter and the end of the Franco-German War , the line was initially only opened to military trains on March 8, 1871, and to civilian traffic on June 19, 1871.

The Viaduc de la Bouble has been a listed building since 2009 . Extensive renovation work was carried out.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Unless otherwise stated, the information in this section is based on: Exposition Universelle à Vienne en 1873: Viaduc de la Bouble . Imprimerie Nationale, Paris 1873, pp. 24-36. ( Digitized on le Cnum - Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers )
  2. ↑ Notice n ° PA03000036 on Base Mérimée
  3. ↑ Projet de valorisation patrimoniale de trois viaducs ferroviaires on archive.org