Wesel Railway Bridge, Railway bridge in Wesel, Germany.
The Wesel Railway Bridge was a 1,950-metre Rhine crossing on the Haltern–Venlo line, opened in 1874. Its river span consisted of four steel sections of 104 metres each, flanked by brick approach bridges: 65 brick arches totalling 770 metres on the left bank and 32 brick arches plus 6 steel bridges totalling 766 metres on the right. The bricks were fired on site from clay dug out of the pier foundations. The bridge no longer exists; only the Fort I on the left bank survives.
The Cologne-Minden Railway Company built the bridge between 1872 and 1874 for the Hamburg–Venlo line, opening it to traffic on 1 March 1874; at 1,950 metres it was then the longest Rhine bridge. Renewed on its old river piers in 1926–27, it was blown up by German engineers on 10 March 1945 and never rebuilt. Only the nearby road bridge, added in 1917, was reconstructed after the war.
The bridge gave its name to the Robert A. Gouldin Bridge, as the US Army named its 1945 replacement after Major Gouldin of the 355th Engineer General Services Regiment, who died during its construction. The structure is listed as an architectural heritage monument and forms part of the Route der Industriekultur, the Ruhr industrial heritage route.
The bridge no longer exists: German engineers blew it up on 10 March 1945 and it was never rebuilt. Only the remains of the two river piers stood until 1968, when they were removed because they obstructed shipping. On the left bank, behind the dike, the brick Fort I of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company survives in private ownership.
The bridge's brick approach spans were fired on site from clay dug out during pier excavation. The structure was 1,950 metres long when built, the longest Rhine bridge of its time, and its four steel river spans each measured 104 metres. The Cöln-Mindener Railway exhibited the plans at the 1873 Vienna World's Fair and received an honorary diploma.
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