Filstal Bridge near Mühlhausen im Täle - Germany

(Satellite)

porr-group, cropped
It is 485m long and up to 85m high. "The Filstal Bridge is located on the new Wendlingen-Ulm line, a section of the major Stuttgart21 project," and it will carry ICE trains up to 250 km/h (155mph). "It connects two tunnels: the Boßler Tunnel and the Steinbühltunnel."

 

Satellite

The satellite image is rather old because Global Earth shows the second track. Between Dec 2015 and Aug 2016 they started moving dirt.

Global Earth, Dec 2022

This video is narrated in German, which I don't understand; but the visual information is universal.

6:54 video @ 2:14

The concrete arch road bridge on the right is also rather impressive.

6:54 video @ 5:52

LiebherrConstruction posted
From 11th of December [2022], trains will be travelling at a speed of up to 250 km/h on the Filstal bridge. Four of our High-Top cranes, one 280 EC-H 12 Litronic, two 280 EC-H 16 Litronic and one 630 EC-H 40 Litronic, were also involved in the construction of Germany's third-highest railway bridge.
The operating range limiting system ABB proved to be particularly helpful during the work. Test runs were therefore able to start on the completed side of the structure while construction work was still underway on the parallel-running bridge. Mobile cranes with high hook heights were used to dismantle the tower cranes in this year.
Read more: https://bit.ly/3uxaqf9

Liebherr
[This is a better view of the mobile crane that is helping to take down a tower crane.]
"To make dismantling easier, the 630 EC-H 40 was climbed down from 76 metres to around 26 metres and then dismantled. All other cranes were dismantled without climbing....The journey time between Ulm and Stuttgart will be reduced by 15 minutes. When Stuttgart’s new main station S21 opens at a later date, the resulting time saving is expected to be as much as 30 minutes."

This photo is old enough that the falsework is still under the first track that was built.

sulzle-nutzeisen-1
The longest span is 70m and this is the third highest railway bridge in Germany.

sulzle-nutzeisen-2
"On July 14, 2021, the final bridge closure of the new Filstal railroad bridge near Mühlhausen im Täle was celebrated with a ceremony. The spectacular construction project for the future Stuttgart-Ulm high-speed rail line is thus entering its final phase. Since 2017, formwork, reinforcement and concreting have been carried out here to build Germany’s third-highest railroad bridge at a height of 85 meters. A total of 55,000 m3 of concrete, 7,700 tons of steel and 800 tons of prestressing steel were used for the bridge."

BridgeWeb
The new route is 60km long. The bridge is being tested at speeds up to 275km even though the operational speed limit will be 250km.

RailwayPro
It passed its high-speed tests by April 27, 2022. "The half of the 60 km Wendlingen–Ulm railway line runs through 12 tunnels, 37 bridges and is served by the Merklingen station. The new line is part of the Stuttgart–Ulm rail project which includes the Stuttgart 21 covering the reorganisation of the Stuttgart rail node and is designed to allow trains to run at a speed of 250 km/h creating the basis for more attractive journey times throughout Baden-Württemberg."

 

newsingermany
The new Filstal Bridge is a nightmare
This seems to be an extreme example of "clickbait." I could not find anything wrong with the bridge in the article to make it a "nightmare.". In fact it passed stress tests as well as speed tests. "In several stress tests, for which two diesel locomotives had hauled up a 700-tonne ballast train, the strength of the bridge was monitored by sensors and computers."

Lots of rebar is needed for the bridge.

bbbeton

 Several sources indicated the bridge used prestressed concrete. (E.g. "Prestressed concrete hollow box bridge" [poor-group]) In America, that would mean that concrete would be poured in a casting yard to make segments that are then lifted into place. But here the concrete is poured in place in a form held by the travelling formwork carriage. So that form must be enhanced to embed prestressed steel in the concrete. I hope to write some separate notes on this new (to me) way of building big bridges.

BreakBulk