.. to Nowhere…er… with no name.

Things move slowly in Mainz.

The imaginatively named “Railway Bridge” turned 150 at the end of last year and they STILL haven’t got around to giving it a proper name.

The OTHER railway bridge was christened the Kaiserbrücke (or The North Bridge, in Deutsche Bahn terminology).

This one’s just “The Railway Bridge. Or The South Bridge, in Deutsche Bahn terminology.

Not that it’s the original bridge, of course.

Its predecessor was only the 4th Rhine bridge and lasted quite well until 18 March 1945, when German sappers demolished it in an effort to slow the progress of the allied troops.

Yeah right.

By 14 April 1945, American engineers had thrown together the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial Bridge – a rickety affair with no arch to allow Rhine traffic to pass.

Duly replaced with the General George C. Marshall Bridge, which was better than nothing, but still not exactly what the doctor ordered.

1948 saw the start of the current bridge (2 single-track bridges, actually ) with a pedestrian/cycle path on the downstream side with the grand opening on 24 September 1949.

Except they didn’t bother to give it a name…

10 Jan This entry was published on 10 January, 2013 at 13:00 and is filed under Architecture, Mainz, Transport. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.