Rendsburg Hochbrücke reopens

By chance I discovered that that the Transporter bridge function of the Rendsburg Hochbrücke was fully restored to public operation last Friday (March 4th. 2022) as reported here in the local press. It’s the end of a long saga that began in 2016 when the gondola collided with a passing  ship - an inquiry found that the fault rested with the operator of the gondola for failing to observe the approaching vessel. After the impact the gondola was deemed beyond repair and a replacement was built at a cost of 13 million euros. Last Friday was a day of excitement for the citizenry who gathered in numbers to serenade the return of their much loved bridge. An account of my visit to Rendsburg in 2018 can be read here.

Rendsburg Hochbrücke

This rather nondescript postcard was acquired more than 40 years ago at a time when I was looking for cards of bridges. I can even recall where I found it – in a box of cards at the back of an antique shop on Kensington Church Street. The card fails to do justice to the engineering splendour of the subject. Although I found out for myself when I visited last month just how difficult it is to reveal its wonders in a single photograph. Rendsburg is in Schleswig-Holstein on the Nord-Ostsee Kanal (what we would call the Kiel Canal), in territory that was for centuries contested by Denmark and Germany – it was finally incorporated into Prussia in 1866. Arriving on a train from Hamburg, I consulted a map and satisfied myself that a left and left again would soon bring me to the bridge I’d come to see. I couldn’t have been more wrong as I strode into the suburbs – but when I looked left while crossing at traffic lights I observed an extraordinary sight in the distance. The vast superstructure of a cruise ship was inching along, its upper decks towering over a Lidl store, offering a valuable clue to the location of the Canal. My route took me through the working port of Rendsburg via an avenue of warehouses and grain elevators, to the bridge itself.

The reason this bridge is special is that in addition to carrying a busy railway line over the canal at a height that permits ocean-going vessels to pass underneath, it is also a Transporter Bridge enabling a handful of vehicles and pedestrians to traverse in a suspended gondola (Schwebefähre). It was built in just 2 years between 1911 and 1913 to carry the Neumünster to Flensburg railway across the canal. Regrettably, since January 2016 when a myopic navigator allowed his ship to collide with the gondola the transporter function has been inactive. The gondola has been removed and remains in store while its future is debated. Given the very small number of surviving Transporter Bridges, it would be a great loss if it wasn’t restored to use.

Another feature to admire is the engineering solution to the problem of how to route trains to the deck of a bridge that stands 42 metres above the water level. The southern approach involved constructing a 5.5km inclined ramp at a gradient of 1/150. Space on the northern bank was more limited and had to be found by building what has become known as the Rendsburg Loop – a 360 degree circuit (5.5km in length) over the eastern suburbs that crosses over itself before finally returning to ground level on the approach to Rendsburg Bahnhof. It makes for an exhilarating, if occasionally vertigo-inducing, train ride. In a short-lived spirit of optimism I set out on foot to trace the Loop but had to admit defeat as it swooped off into the distance over a hundred gardens before suddenly turning up again in a place that made no sense. I found a place where a public footpath ran underneath, between the towering bridge supports but hopeless confusion soon set in and it was a relief to find the station more or less by accident.

There’s a handily placed waterside bar/restaurant (Brückenterrassen Rendsburg), more or less underneath the bridge where the overhead rumble of passing trains adds to the atmosphere. When a big ship passes the rooms overlooking the canal go dark. They also serve a monumental plate of Bratkartoffeln mit Ei und Schinken. Recommended.

 Note: The well-travelled Bridgehunter has a much more informed description of this bridge on his blog.

Bridges of 2017

After last year’s bridge bonanza, 2017 was a very modest year. Just 3 to display – one from Mizen Head in County Cork, one from the Dortmund-Ems Canal and lastly from Berlin, the Oberbaumbrücke. Mizen Head Footbridge is a concrete through-arch structure that links the Mizen Peninsula with the island of Cloghán, at the south westerly tip of County Cork. It replaced a life-expired original with a visually identical new bridge in 2011.

The Lucasbrücke road bridge crosses the Dortmund Ems Canal at Datteln, near Waltrop. An earlier bridge, built in 1899 was destroyed in the war in 1945. It was replaced by this structure that had been built for use in the Russian Campaign and had been left unused in a factory in Duisburg.

The Oberbaumbrücke crosses the River Spree, connecting Kreuzberg to Friedrichshain. It’s a two-level bridge with an elevated railway on the upper deck, built in 1894-96 to a design by Otto Stahn (1859-1930). Architecturally, it’s a mediaevalist fantasy every bit as silly as Tower Bridge in London with two defensive towers, cousins to London’s absurd Gothic grandeur. Inspiration for the towers came from the Mitteltorturm in Prenzlau. The Wehrmacht blew up the central section in 1945 to obstruct the advance of the Red Army. When Berlin was divided between the allies it became a crossing point between the Soviet and American sectors. The bridge itself came under the control of the DDR and following construction of the Wall in 1961 it was reduced to a pedestrian crossing. After German reunification the bridge was substantially rebuilt after decades of neglect. U-Bahn trains resumed running over the bridge in 1995.

Past and Present No. 11: Berlin Elektrische Hochbahn

The waterway is the Landwehrkanal and the lower bridge carries rail traffic to and from the Anhalter Bahnhof some 400 metres to the left. The higher bridge carries the Hochbahn (now U-Bahn 1) between the stations of Gleisdreieck and Möckernbrücke. The vintage postcard shows a distant pitched roof building with an arch. These were the offices of the Berlin Railway Administration and the Hochbahn was routed directly through the archway. The contemporary buildings on the same site are occupied by today’s equivalent – the BVG. On the left of the old card are the offices of the Anhalter Goods Station – this is now the site of the Deutsches Technikmuseum, distinguished by the plane that rests on top of it. The U-Bahn bridge has been stripped of its decorative elements and the Anhalter rail bridge has been replaced by a modern approximation reduced to the status of a footbridge. To see a post from 2011 about the Anhalter Bahnhof, please follow this link.

Past and Present No. 10: Henrichenburg Schiffshebewerk

This innovative boat lift on the Dortmund to Ems Canal was constructed in 1899. Connecting the inland port of Dortmund with the North Sea involved a change of levels in the Waltrop area – the lift eliminated the need for a long and slow series of locks. Kaiser Wilhelm performed the opening ceremony in August 1899 – commemorated by belligerent Prussian Eagles that glare down from the heights at both ends of the lift. The lift took just 2 minutes to raise or lower a vessel but the whole operation took 45 minutes. The average number of daily operations was 40. It was retired in 1962 when an electrically operated replacement was commissioned nearby. The abandoned lift remained in a derelict condition until 1995 when it was restored as part of the Ruhrgebiet Route Industriekultur – an ambitious programme of repurposing redundant industrial relics as heritage attractions.

Postcard of the Day No. 74 – Street-running in Syracuse

The arresting spectacle of full size trains muscling their way through city streets is still to be seen in a number of American locations from Tampa to Oakland. For over 75 years it was a commonplace in the heart of the city of Syracuse until it came to an end in 1936 when an elevated railroad was constructed. Flagship New York Central trains such as the Empire State Express and the Twentieth Century Limited cruised slowly accompanied by a continuous warning bell chime along Washington Street across Salina Street offering passengers uninterrupted views through downtown first floor windows. We have three postcards recording this unusual sight plus a view of the New York Central Railroad Station. The last card shows the Erie Canal where it passes through Syracuse with its warehouses, swing-bridges and loading docks around the time the old song “Fifteen Years on the Erie Canal” was written in 1905. A century later Bruce Springsteen thundered his way through and left it for dead on the album, “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions”. 

Swing Time

Excavating through the Cheshire countryside to build the Manchester Ship Canal between 1887 and 1894 involved repeatedly slicing through existing lines of communication – all of which had to be maintained. With a need to provide clearance for ocean-going shipping the favoured solution for roads was the provision of swing-bridges to allow free passage with the minimum of delay. In all there were six plus an audacious swing-aqueduct that carried the Bridgewater Canal across the waterway at Barton. The Barton Road and Barton Canal swing-bridges pivot on an artificial island in the canal – all the other swing-bridges pivot on the bank. They are all very similar in design and with a single exception they pivot on the north bank. Designed to prioritise the needs of shipping over those of road traffic, they must be a constant source of irritation to road users kept waiting while cumbersome ships pass slowly by. What we see in these photographs are detached sections of roadway, temporarily devoid of traffic and rotated through 90 degrees. The Barton Aqueduct is laden with some 800 tonnes of water from the Bridgewater Canal. The photographs that follow show all the swing-bridges on the Manchester Ship Canal from east to west, bracketed by a pair of vintage postcard views. 

Barton Aqueduct

Barton Road Swing Bridge

Knutsford Road Swing Bridge

London Road Swing Bridge

Chester Road Swing Bridge

Moore Lane Swing Bridge

Old Quay Swing Bridge

Canal Saint-Martin

There must be something to be said for taking a trip on board one of the enormous cruisers that ply between Bastille and la Villette along the Canal St-Martin. As an experience in slow travel it may have something to commend it but the best way to see the canal is surely to walk it. That way you can set your own pace, cross from side to side where bridges permit, explore the side streets and watch the cruisers pass through the locks from the vantage point of the footbridges. There will be no amplified tour guide instructing you in what to see and, by implication, what is not worth looking at. The only guide worth following on this journey is the estimable Richard Cobb, an urban explorer with an absolute dedication to the untrodden track. The centrepiece of Cobb’s 1980 book, The Streets of Paris (with photographs by Nicholas Breach) is an exploration of the canal and its byways in which he eloquently evokes its long lost heyday as the major trading route between Paris and the Low Countries when the bars, cafés, restaurants and hotels along the quais catered to the needs of a transient working class population. The neighbouring streets were home to a multitude of small businesses, artisans and craftsmen, repair shops and hand-laundries.



Walking south from Jaurés along the quai de Valmy the first lock is marked by a canopy of trees at Square Eugène-Varlin that shelter the cheerfully named écluse des morts (lock of the dead). From the footbridge can be seen the first glimpse of the magnificent 120° curve that presents a vast sweeping expanse of waterway, wide enough to accommodate 3 Grand Union Canals. The curve gives way to the next lock spanned by the passerelle des Récollets, also known as passerelle de l’Hôtel du Nord. The hotel on the quai de Jemmapes gave its name to the famous Marcel Carné film of 1938 although the external hotel footage was all filmed on a purpose-built set. No longer a hotel it continues as a bar and restaurant.


At the southern end of the Square des Récollets is the Pont tournant de la Grange-aux-Belles, the first of two such bridges that enable canal traffic to assert some priority over vehicular traffic when they swing back to allow boats to pass through. Next up is the Pont tournant de la rue Dieu and finally, the Square Frédérick-Lemaître at which point the canal dives underground for the last stretch to Bastille. The gentrification of the canal-side that Cobb foresaw is pretty much complete by now but even if it’s no longer possible to enjoy the sight of long lines of heavily laden barges streaming north to Belgium, less spectacular pleasures are still available. In particular there are railings to lean against, steps to climb, benches to sit on and countless other locations from which one can observe and do absolutely nothing. There is space, atmosphere, water and reflected colour and light to engage the senses and a perfect sense of insulation from the frenetic turbulence of the city. No serious flâneur can afford to miss it.