Hammer Bridge

The Hammer Bridge is a 220m long railway bridge on the Weser Valley line crossing the Geul valley a few hundred meters to the south of Hergenrath.Today it is in the German speaking part of Belgium. Before frontier changes mandated in 1919 shifted the frontier between Belgium and Germany approximately 36 km (23 miles) along the railway line in a southerly direction the bridge was in Germany. Back in 1841 when work started on the first railway bridge at this point, it was located in the Rhine Province of Prussia.The bridge was replaced twice, most recently in 1997/99 in order to take the extra weight of the new high-speed train route into which the bridge has now been incorporated.HistoryThe first bridge 1843-1940The Hammer Bridge is part of the railway line constructed in the 1840s to link the rapidly industrialising Ruhr region in western Prussia with the recently constructed Belgian rail network. The bridge was designed by Chief Construction Director G. Moller from Darmstadt, and construction onsite was managed by Engineer F. Wittfeldt. Work began in 1841 on a double viaduct, entirely of brick construction, across the River Geul The lower half of the viaduct consisted of 13 arches, placed above which were 17 similarly sized arches, of which two at each end were placed on low abutments rather than arches. Until 1897 the Hammer Bridge was the highest railway viaduct in what had, by that time, become the unified German state.