Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

Registered UK Charity (No. 115342)

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 162,256 pages of information and 244,497 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Peitz Iron Bridge

From Graces Guide

This was an early example of a cast iron arch bridge whose arch ribs were assembled from iron castings in the form of flanged pipes.

It crossed the River Hammerstrom in Peitz, Germany.

Georg von Reichenbach had proposed assembling arch bridges using cast-iron pipe sections with bolted flange connections, in order to facilitate transport and assembly. The idea was first applied in Germany in 1824 for a bridge over the Oker in Braunschweig. The Peitz bridge followed in 1828/1829. Herr Nath was the designer, and Voigtmann the constructor.

The span was 70.7 m and the width 4.56 m. The four cast-iron arches were assembled from flanged pipes each 7.57 m long. The radius was about 17.9 m. The outer diameter of the tubes was 210 mm, their thickness 26mm. The cast-iron covering plates were approx. 0.42 m wide and 26 mm thick and with longitudinal ribs, supported by wrought iron beams.

The bridge lasted until about 1842. It seems that the assembly suffered from having a large number of components with insufficient accuracy of fit, with irregularities in the flange flatness.

The above information is condensed from here [1]. This source includes drawings of the bridge.

Note: Barrington's Bridge in Ireland is an earlier - surviving - example of a bridge of similar construction, built in 1818.

See Also

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Sources of Information

  1. [1] 200 Jahre eiserne Brücken auf dem europä schen Kontinent (200 Years of iron bridges on the European continent - Following the tracks in Silesia and Lusatia) by Hartmut Pasternak, Jozef Rabiega, Jan Biliszczuk. Ernst & Sohn Stahlbau 65 (1996) Heft 12 (in German)