The growing economic cooperation between the former Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union was also reflected in the increased transportation of goods by railways. The old single-track line did not meet the increasing demands, therefore it was decided to build a new double-track railway line between Čierna nad Tisa, Košice and Žilina, known as Trať druživy. The interesting Ružín Viaduct is located on this route. This viaduct is a railway bridge on the line from Žilina to Košice near the village of Margecany in the Gelnica district in eastern Slovakia. It was built between 1952 and 1955, is 280 meters long and leads through the Ružín dam near its dam. With a height of 40 meters above the water level, it is the highest railway bridge in Slovakia. The track on the bridge is double-tracked and electrified. There is a viaduct on the line between the Malá Lodina station and the Ružín stop, which is located right behind the bridge. It is the largest bridge on the ŽSR 180 Žilina – Košice line, it is double-tracked and electrified. The viaduct has a separate steel riveted structure built for each track. The viaduct has a separate structure for each track. Each structure has four simple spans with a span of 69.0 m with lattice main girders of a diagonal system with subsidiary verticals. The transoms of the bridge deck are embedded between the upper bands of the main beams, on which the stringers are placed. The total weight of the steel structure is 2800 tons. The concrete supports and pillars have a stone cladding of lined andesite masonry. During its construction, they used a mounting device for the first time when lifting 4 fields. Individual truss structures weighed about 100 tons. The structures were made next to the pillars. The portals straddled both the structures and the pillars, so the difference between the portals was about 13.5 m. The pillars were simple lattices of quadrilaterals on top of a square, with an edge of 100 cm. The column heads were modified for bridging. The portals made it possible to move the structure to the axis of the bridge after lifting it. Therefore, the fixed beams were suspended on carts that ran along the rails located on the upper belt of the bridge. The bridging was reinforced with horizontal beams forming a handling bridge. Electric gates for lifting and manual movement were placed at the bases of the columns. The transfer of the gantry cranes to the neighboring field was carried out by sliding along the rails while simultaneously re-anchoring the masts.
The main construction works were completed on July 29, 1953. The last part of the viaduct was lifted onto the pillars on 29 September 1954. Originally, the entire bridge was to be assembled on assembly scaffolding with high wooden supports and a steel supporting structure of I 500 beams, which would have used about 1,700 m3 of wood and 1,500 m of rolled beams. Scaffolding in the first and fourth, which was also used for the construction of supports, was also used for the assembly of the steel structure. In the second field, where the original single-track line passed, steel scaffolding was built from inventory parts instead of wooden scaffolding. The anchor towers of the assembly scaffold were up to 30 m high. Two I 800 beams were placed in the axis of the future main beams of the new bridge, and the rails of the assembly gantry crane with a load capacity of 100 kN were placed on the two I 800 beams.
Sources
- Ing. Alojz Drozd, Ing. Eugen Chladný, Ing. Ladislav Paulíny, Ing. Ivan Poliaček, CSc., Ing. Vladimír Vébr, doc. Ing. Jozef Zvara, CSc.: Stavebníctvo na Slovensku 1945 – 1985 Dopravné stavby, ALFA Bratislava 1989,
- Ing. Kubáček a kol.: Dejiny železníc na území Slovenska,
- Ing. Krejčiřík: Po stopách našich železníc.