Simbach–Braunau railway bridge, Steel railway bridge between Simbach am Inn, Germany and Braunau am Inn, Austria
The Simbach–Braunau railway bridge is a 400-metre-long truss bridge over the Inn between Simbach in Bavaria and Braunau in Upper Austria. It has five piers, three in the river and two in the Bavarian floodplain, and crosses the river at an angle of 60 degrees. The 228-metre German section is operated by DB RegioNetz Infrastruktur, the Austrian section by ÖBB-Infrastruktur.
The bridge officially opened on June 1, 1871, creating the first direct railway link between the two countries at this crossing point. German forces destroyed it in 1945, but it was rebuilt after World War II and has since resumed its role as an international transport corridor.
The bridge connects two regions whose railway networks were once entirely separate, serving as a meeting point between Bavaria and Upper Austria. It enables the flow of goods and passengers across one of central Europe's major transport corridors linking southern Germany to Austria.
The bridge is accessible only to train traffic and cannot be entered by pedestrians. Visitors can best view the structure from the banks of the Inn River, where footpaths and viewing points are available in both towns.
The two eastern piers were sunk using pressurised caissons, making this the first bridge in Bavaria built with that method. The wrought-iron truss girders supplied by the Nuremberg engineering firm Klett & Co. were held together by 163,080 rivets. The piers and abutments were already dimensioned for two tracks, but the superstructures carried only one.
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