The bridge that taught a country engineering

Chapter

1860 – 1887

Dobruja railhead

Cernavodă, since 1860

Muntenia railhead

Fetești, from 1879

Rejected projects

8 + 5

In 1860 the Offenheim company laid the Constanța–Cernavodă line while Dobruja was still Ottoman ground; after the 1877–78 independence war returned the province, Romania began the București–Ciulnița–Fetești line in 1879 and bought the Cernavodă–Constanța line back on 10 December 1882. Between the two railheads stood the Danube, crossed only by ferry and steamboat – Eminescu himself took the Giurgiu–Cernavodă boat to see the sea, 13 years before the opening.

The Ion C. Brătianu government answered with two international contests: 8 projects in 1883, 5 in 1886, every one rejected though French, German, Swiss and Belgian firms competed. Gustave Eiffel's firm, fresh from the Ploiești–Predeal bridges under Émile Nouguier, drew a Danube superstructure – then the talks broke, and the legend that its steel sailed to Senegal's Faidherbe bridge began its long, false life in tourist guides.

The nearest Danube bridge stood 955 km upstream, at Novi Sad, opened 1883. In December 1887 the Public Works Ministry stopped shopping abroad and entrusted the crossing to a Romanian: the contests' own secretary, Anghel Saligny.

Meanwhile Meanwhile, the second Tay bridge opened on 13 July 1887: 3,264 m of iron, Europe's longest – for eight years.

Chapter

1887 – 1890

Design commissioned

December 1887

Final design

1 December 1889

Calculation checks

7

Anghel Saligny (19 April 1854 – 17 June 1925) had learned bridges at Charlottenburg, raised the Adjud–Târgu Ocna line in 1881–82 and the 430 m Cosmești bridge, and was pouring the world's first reinforced-concrete silos when the December 1887 commission reached him. He gathered seven engineers of the National School of Bridges and Roads – Baiulescu, Herjeu, Gheorghiu, Bădescu, Christescu, Cazimir, Zahariade – and went to look at the future in Scotland.

The Firth of Forth, 2,521 m and still rising, was the biggest bridge of that hour; Saligny studied its cantilevers and came home to draw a Romanian answer. The final design of 1 December 1889 proposed two worldwide innovations at full scale: the Gerber cantilever lattice and mild cast steel instead of puddled iron – and Saligny had to fight the routine technicians to impose them both. The calculations were checked seven times.

On paper the crossing read: 190 m in the middle, four times 140 m, a 15-opening viaduct beside; 3 times 140 m with 11 times 50 m over the Borcea; 34 times 42 m over the marsh. At 4,087.95 m the system outran every bridge complex in Europe before a single caisson had sunk.

The right man in the right time.

His contemporaries, via the CFR brochure

Meanwhile Meanwhile, the Forth Bridge opened on 4 March 1890: 2,467 m of cantilever, spans of 521 m – the measure Saligny had gone to see.

Chapter

1890 – 1895

Total, with viaducts

4,087.95 m

Steel, mild / puddled

9,554 t / 310 t

Cost, rails and stations

35M gold lei

Works opened on 9/21 October 1890 in the king's presence – one account says 26 November instead, and the page keeps both dates. The 21 km of single track had to cross a live river, a second arm and 14 km of marsh, so the decks went up on scaffolding while the piers went down in compressed-air caissons: 19,000 cubic metres of digging, 610 t of steel in the caissons, some 62,850 cubic metres of masonry.

The metalwork came from French and Belgian firms and landed by ship at Constanța: 9,554 t of mild cast steel against 310 t of puddled, millions of rivets, 3 million cubic metres of embankments and 200,000 square metres of facings. On 14/26 September 1895 the special train left Gara de Nord at 9:05 and reached Fetești at 12:30; the last rivet was silver, the document was walled in, and the service was sung. Catargiu's salute to the king ran: “With the nation's wrights you subdued the Danube!”

Then the test: 15 heavy locomotives at 60 km/h, whistles, Danube sirens and fanfares, then the guests' train at 80 – without a single recorded flaw. Saligny watched from a shallop under the bridge, beside the workers and designers, guaranteeing the work with his life under the old builders' custom. Asked what he would have done had it fallen, he answered: “I knew it will hold!”

From today, nothing divides Romania on the left of the Danube from Dobruja…

The commemorative act read by Carol I, 14 September 1895

Meanwhile Meanwhile, on 18 October 1895, The Times called it “a surprising achievement at Cernavodă”.

Chapter

1895 – 1987

Borcea rebuilt

1921

Electrified

31 May 1977

New complex

1986–87

Renamed “Eng. Anghel Saligny” after the events of 1944, the complex paid for its strategic place in both wars. In October 1916 the retreating Romanians tried to cut it: the Danube bridge was only damaged and rebuilt by MAN of Augsburg-Nürnberg, while the Borcea bridge fell and rose again on its intact piers, by Romanian hands, in 1921.

In 1941 Soviet bombs broke braces and slid a deck off its bearings without bringing the bridge down; CFR, Reșița and MAN repaired it in about four months with the traffic fully stopped. The Iezer viaduct vanished in 1969 when the marsh was drained, and the 31 May 1977 electrification lifted the upper braces by 1.50 m – then the new Borcea bridge (May 1986) and the new Danube bridge (October 1987) doubled the crossing 30–80 m upstream, and the old bridge was decommissioned.

It stands listed as CT-II-m-A-02872, the maturity exam of Romanian engineering, the silver bridge of Vlahuță's childhood tales. Eighteen centuries earlier another empire had spanned the same river at Drobeta – the sister project tells that crossing, pier by pier.

Silver bridges out of childhood tales…

Alexandru Vlahuță, Picturesque Romania

Meanwhile Meanwhile, in 1919, the Quebec Bridge took the cantilever span record with a single 549 m opening.