Eistalviadukt, Railway bridge in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
The Eistalviadukt is a 271-metre railway bridge, the longest in the Palatinate, whose deck lies 36 metres above the Eisbach. Technically a beam bridge, it has two reinforced-concrete abutments with arches, joined by a steel truss over 200 metres long with parallel chords and an open deck, carried by two concrete piers up to 35 metres high. It also spans the L395 road.
Planning for the Eistalbahn began just three years after Germany's first railway line opened between Nuremberg and Fürth, but the gap between Enkenbach–Eiswoog and Ramsen–Grünstadt was only closed when the viaduct opened in 1932, at a cost of 960,000 Reichsmark. During construction of the Westwall and later in the Second World War, war material rolled west across it. Low-flying aircraft and bombs damaged the bridge in 1944 and 1945; after repairs it reopened in 1949. The last train crossed on 31 December 1988.
The bridge's name comes from the Eisbach stream and the Eiswoog reservoir it crosses. Since 1988 the deck has carried no trains, but the Stumpfwaldbahn heritage narrow-gauge railway now has its western terminus in a locomotive shed directly beneath the viaduct, and the old halt and tracks toward Enkenbach-Alsenborn remain in place.
No trains cross the bridge since the last special railcar run on 31 December 1988; the reactivated Eistalbahn from Grünstadt ends at the Eiswoog halt just east of it. A few metres from that halt a viewpoint looks south over the Eisbach valley, the dam with its hotel and the reservoir. Under the bridge stands the locomotive shed at the western end of the Stumpfwaldbahn narrow-gauge museum line.
The bridge is a steel truss structure, not stone: two steel truss spans with parallel chords and an open deck rest on two reinforced concrete piers up to 35 metres high, with reinforced concrete arch abutments at the slopes. Its construction in 1932 cost 960,000 Reichsmark.
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