Romania's Danube rail bridge—a monument to Anghel Saligny

Abstract

The giant steel-truss rail bridge over the mighty River Danube in Romania is a monument to the country's most revered civil engineer, Anghel Saligny. The technical challenges involved in building 60 m tall piers in 30 m of fast-flowing water and a superstructure that could cope with high winds and low temperatures proved too much for the world's leading civil engineers, none of whom provided a conforming design in two rounds of competition. It was left to Saligny, secretary of the competition, to produce a workable plan—and over 100 years later his ‘King Carol I’ bridge is still in operation.