Göhl valley viaduct
Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 7 ″ N , 5 ° 58 ′ 57 ″ E
| Göhl valley viaduct | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Convicted | Montzen route | |
| place | Moresnet | |
| Entertained by | Infrabel | |
| overall length | 1153 m | |
| Number of openings | 22 m | |
| Pillar spacing | 48 m to 49 m | |
| height | 52 m | |
| start of building | Spring 1915 | |
| completion | October 1916 | |
| location | ||
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The Göhl valley viaduct , also known as the Moresnet viaduct , is a railway viaduct of the Montzen route located in the Moresnet Village part of the Belgian municipality of Plombières . The bridge spans the valley of the Göhl with a total length of 1107 meters and above the Göhl a maximum height of around 52 meters. In the area of the bridge, the route has a gradient of 1.8 per thousand in the direction of Aachen and around a quarter of the bridge length is in an arch with a 1600 meter radius in the plan.
history
The viaduct was built on behalf of the German military authorities in occupied Belgium from spring 1915 to October 1916 by the companies Dyckerhoff & Widmann AG , MAN Werk Gustavsburg , Grün & Bilfinger and Gutehoffnungshütte . For this purpose, forcibly recruited workers from Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Croatia and Russia, as well as Russian prisoners whose camp was set up on what is now the "Val de Vie", among other places, were used. On March 14, 1923, during the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, a bomb exploded near the viaduct; a second failed to ignite. A piece of iron attached to the rails was also found.
On May 18, 1940, the "Cyclistes Frontière" (the cyclist battalion stationed at the border) blew up part of the viaduct. The bridge was repaired under renewed German occupation and in 1940 it was again navigable. In 1944, German troops destroyed the building extensively during the retreat. Due to an acute steel shortage, Belgium took around five years to repair. The Welkenraedt - Plombières - Gemmenich line (line 39) ran under the viaduct until 1957, and the line from Aachen to Tongeren (line 24) ran above the viaduct.
In the 1990s the viaduct was in poor condition, which only allowed a maximum speed of the trains on the bridge of 20 km / h. The bridge was therefore completely renovated between 2002 and 2004. The old riveted steel half-timbered superstructures were exchanged for new superstructures in welded construction. At the same time, the bridge piers were encased in a reinforced concrete shell. In order to impair the traffic on the important freight route as little as possible, the individual trusses were preassembled in Montzen, then driven onto the bridge and handed over to a prepared crane and support structure. The section below was removed and lowered, and finally replaced with the new beam. In this way, the route only had to be closed for one weekend (Saturday to Monday). The new, around two meters lower lattice girders are composite structures with reinforced concrete deck slabs on top , which, in contrast to the construction of the construction period, enable a noise-reducing ballast bed.
Building description
The viaduct has 22 spans and a total span of 1107 meters with a length of 1153 meters between the ends of the abutments . At times it was the longest railway bridge in the Belgian railway network. The structure has a maximum height of 52 meters above the valley floor. The pillar spacing is between 48 and 49 meters. Five wider pillars are used to transfer the forces in the longitudinal direction of the track as a result of braking and accelerating the trains. These are allowed to travel at a maximum of 60 km / h on the renovated viaduct. Since the continuous electrification of the Montzen route in 2008, the system separation point between the Belgian and German traction current systems has been located on the viaduct .
Picture gallery
General view of the viaduct from the northeast
Göhl valley viaduct
Exchange of trusses
historical postcard
German-Belgian border region with the Göhl valley viaduct
literature
- Ernst Gaber : The Geultal Bridge near Aachen. In: Verkehrstechnik , Volume 2, Issue 25 (September 5, 1921), pp. 379–382.
- Hans Schweers, Henning Wall: Railways around Aachen: 150 years of the international route Cologne - Aachen - Antwerp . Verlag Schweers + Wall, Aachen 1993, ISBN 3-921679-91-5
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Schweers, Henning Wall: Railways around Aachen: 150 years of the international route Cologne - Aachen - Antwerp . 112
- ↑ a b "Les Noeuds ferroviaires des 3 Frontières", A. Stassen
- ^ Klaus Kemp: Regiebahn. Reparations, occupation, war against the Ruhr, Reichsbahn. The railways in the Rhineland and the Ruhr area 1918–1930 . EK-Verlag , Freiburg 2016, ISBN 978-3-8446-6404-1 , p. 296.
