Old Railway Bridge, Steel truss railway bridge across Sava River, Belgrade, Serbia.
The Old Railway Bridge is a 462 m (1,516 ft) steel truss bridge over the Sava in Belgrade, resting on six cuboid stone pillars. It links Bara Venecija, just north of the Belgrade Fair, with the New Belgrade industrial neighborhoods of Savski Nasip and Mala Ciganlija, between the Gazela Bridge and the New Railway Bridge. The present steel structure dates from after World War II.
The bridge opened in the late 1800s as part of the Belgrade-Niš railway line and served as the city's main crossing over the river. It was damaged and rebuilt several times after conflicts in the 20th century.
The bridge's first train, on 1 September 1884, carried King Milan, Queen Natalie and Crown Prince Alexander towards Vienna. A popular but unproven story holds that Prince Milan took a bribe of one million gold francs to award the job to a French company. The Hungarian ship Alkotmány was passing beneath when the span was blown up in 1914.
The bridge has been out of service since summer 2018, when the last train crossed it before Belgrade Main Station closed. It is not open to pedestrians or cyclists. It can be viewed from the Sava promenade or from Bara Venecija on the right bank and from Savski Nasip in New Belgrade.
The bridge was the only railway crossing over the Sava in Belgrade until the New Railway Bridge opened in 1979, 95 years after the first train crossed in 1884. In 1942 the Germans began a parallel twin bridge 20 m downstream, but it was never finished and both structures were damaged in 1944.
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