Abstract
A SHORT history and description of the Storstrø m bridge connecting the Danish islands Falster and Masnedo, which was opened by King Christian X on September 26, appears in The Times of September 25. Masnedo was linked up with Zealand by the Masnedsund Bridge constructed in an earlier section of the bridge building programme initiated in 1933. The Storstrøm Bridge, which crosses an arm of the Great Belt, curving in a wide sweep of more than two miles, has been built for the Danish State Railways by the British firm, Messrs. Dorman Long and Co., Ltd., and completed seven weeks before the scheduled date. In its construction, the new 'chromador' steel, which has improved corrosion-resisting properties, has been used. The bridge has three navigable spans, the centre one 430 ft. in length and with about 80 ft. headroom, and forty-six shorter spans in the approaches. Tidal conditions, pack-ice and sea-scour were provided for by new and ingenious methods adopted in the building of the concrete and granite piers and in the erection of the steel girders. The bridge is described as being of a slender appearance but having a magnificence which can best be appreciated when the aluminium coloured steel is viewed in the morning sunshine. It provides a carriage way, a foot and cycle track, and a single line of railway on which trains can pass at a speed of 50 miles per hour. It completes the railway link between the Continent and Scandinavia for, by its opening, trains or cars can now run, via Warnemunde train-ferry, from Hook of Holland, Paris and Berlin, direct to Copenhagen, whence they can proceed by another train-ferry to Malmø, so that the Danish route now compares favourably with that via Trelleborg-Sassnitz. It has the additional importance that it makes possible the extended use of modern streamlined 'lightning' trains in consequence of the longer journeys now undertaken.
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The StorstrØ m Bridge. Nature 140, 577 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140577b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140577b0