before the storm.
railroad bridge Müngsten is still in reconstruction. Fortunately, the reconstruction process does not forbid anymore driving over it.
Take care!
Tag: müngstener Brücke
Monochrome Tuesday: blowball
You’re a regular reader and you’re surprised seeing a different topic as usual on Tuesdays? Don’t wonder. Leanne Cole, the organizer of Monochrome Madness, is currently on vacation. Though, she pauses for a few weeks. But, I put a monochrome image online for you, anyway.
Summer’s nearly over, now. Meteorologists declare September 1st to be the first day of fall, although the astronomical start of fall is tomorrow. I hope, you enjoyed your summer (in case, you live in the northern hemisphere, like I do) or your winter (in the southern hemisphere).
September 23rd is the day, when day and night are of the same length, just like on March 20th. This happens, when the sun crosses the equator. Because of the tracks of our planet through the universe is not exactly balanced with the earth rotation, these moments can differ a few hours. Thus, it is i.e. 23rd in one year and 22nd in the other. The same is true for the crossing in spring.
Take care!
Monochrome Tuesday: bridge
You’re a regular reader and you’re surprised seeing a different topic as usual on Tuesdays? Don’t wonder. Leanne Cole, the organizer of Monochrome Madness, is currently on vacation. Though, she pauses for a few weeks. But, I put a monochrome image online for you, anyway.
As you might have seen, this weeks topic at weekly photo challenge at The Daily Post is ‘connected’. I already have put my contribution online on Friday evening. It was a different interpretation, than Ben from WordPress might have had in his mind, when he published the theme. Here, I have a second post for that theme. But, this time way more following his idea 🙂
Take care!
Monochrome Madness 2-22
For this Monochrome Madness I went to a park in the triangle of three towns in our neighborhood: Wuppertal, Remscheid and Solingen. Leanne Cole asked us for bridges for this challenge. The park is called “Brückenpark” (bridge park). I wasn’t in that park for a few years, because it is quite small. It’s located in the valley of the river Wupper. I showed some photos taken there in a past post. And proposed to discover a not so hidden secret 🙂
This is the proposed secret: a huge iron railroad bridge crossing the valley 107 meters above the river. The bridge was built more than 100 years ago by using the same technique, that was used for the Eiffeltower in Paris and the Wuppertal Schwebebahn.
The next few paragraphs are an excerpt from the english Wikipedia:
The bridge was a masterpiece of Victorian-era engineering. For its time, it was a highly sophisticated structure. It astonished the local population, many of whom had had little exposure to such state-of-the-art engineering work.
First drafts for a bridge connecting the two cities of Remscheid and Solingen go back as far as 1889. Preparatory work began in 1893, the bridge was finished in 1897.
The six support columns have a maximum height of 69 meters (230 ft). In the middle of the structure, the main arc has a span of 170 meters (560 ft). The overall length of the structure is 465 meters (1,530 ft).
A total of 5,000 tons of steel were used in its construction. 950,000 rivets hold the structure together. During construction, a number of advanced building techniques were used.
Anton von Rieppel (1852 – 31 January 1926), an architect and engineer, was in charge of the project. A memorial plaque at the foot of the bridge reminds one of his efforts.
Originally, the bridge was planned to be single-track. However, high future traffic growth projections led to the redesign as a dual-track bridge. Before its opening, the rail distance between the cities of Remscheid and Solingen was 42 kilometers (26 mi). With a direct connection via the bridge, this distance shrank to 8 kilometers (5.0 mi).
The german Wikipedia has much more details, than the english one.
Since November 2010, the bridge was closed for reconstruction and restoration works. I already was in that park in May 2010, thus I included two old photos. The one with the red S-Bahn (S = schnell = quick/fast, Bahn = train – one of our public short distance people transportation vehicles). The other one shows the complete bridge, but with way lower trees. This time I was in the same place to get a view to the bridge.
For commuters the closed bridge is a huge disaster. To come from one side of the bridge to the other side, they have had to leave the train and use a shuttle bus to the next railway station on the other side. I was told, that has had cost them more than an hour, because the bus has had to go down in narrow serpentines, drive to the closest street bridge and then climb up through narrow serpentines.
The bridge was reopened in December 2014 but closed again in January because of a landslide as a result of heavy rains. I don’t know for sure, if the bridge is already open again. Nevertheless, there are still restoration works ongoing.
Take care!
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