|
Water Bridge |
|
An amazing water bridge in
Germany.... What a feat! Six years, 500 million euros, 918 meters long.......now this is engineering! This is a channel-bridge over the River Elbe and joins the former East and West Germany, as part of the unification project. It is located in the city of Magdeburg, near Berlin. The photo was taken on the day of inauguration. I forwarded this to those who appreciate engineering projects.....  |
|
Origins: The
photograph displayed above is one of a real structure, a kilometer-long
"concrete bathtub" water bridge over the Elbe River in Germany that joins
the Elbe-Havel canal to the Mittelland canal near the eastern town of
Magdeburg.
As Deutsche Welle described the bridge upon its completion in 2003:
Taking six years to build and costing around half a billion euros, the
massive undertaking will connect Berlin's inland harbor with the ports
along the Rhine river. At the center of the project is Europe's longest
water bridge measuring in just shy of a kilometer at 918 meters. The huge
tub to transport ships over the Elbe took 24,000 metric tons of steel and
68,000 cubic meters of concrete to build.
The water bridge will enable river barges to avoid a lengthy and sometimes unreliable passage along the Elbe. Shipping can often come to a halt on the stretch if the river's water mark falls to unacceptably low levels.
Plans for joining the two canals had been conceived as far back as
1919, and construction on such a project began during the 1930s, but
first World
|