Legions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski Bridge

The Legions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski Bridge ( pl, Most im. Legionów Marszałka Józefa Piłsudskiego) is a road-railway

bridge A bridge is a structure built to span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or rail) without blocking the way underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, which is usually somethi ...

over the

Vistula River The Vistula (; pl, Wisła, ) is the longest river in Poland and the ninth-longest river in Europe, at in length. The drainage basin, reaching into three other nations, covers , of which is in Poland. The Vistula rises at Barania Góra in ...

Płock Płock (pronounced ) is a city in central Poland, on the Vistula river, in the Masovian Voivodeship. According to the data provided by GUS on 31 December 2021, there were 116,962 inhabitants in the city. Its full ceremonial name, according to th ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

, connecting the Old Town and Radziwie district on a left river bank. The bridge was constructed as part of a new railway line from Kutno to Sierpce and Brodnica needed to fill a gap in the infrastructure of the newly independent Second Polish Republic left after the period the partitions of Poland where in the russian controlled Congress Poland the occupiers limited the construction of railways on the left bank of the Vistula river for strategic reasons, and create a rail link from Lwów through Skarżysko,

Łódź Łódź, also rendered in English as Lodz, is a city in central Poland and a former industrial centre. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is located approximately south-west of Warsaw. The city's coat of arms is an example of cant ...

and

Brodnica Brodnica (german: Strasburg in Westpreußen or Strasburg an der Drewenz) is a town in northern Poland with 28,574 inhabitants . It is the seat of Brodnica County in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship. The nearby Brodnica Landscape Park, a pro ...

to the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

linking the envisioned future Central Industrial Region with the port of

Gdynia Gdynia ( ; ; german: Gdingen (currently), (1939–1945); csb, Gdiniô, , , ) is a city in northern Poland and a seaport on the Baltic Sea coast. With a population of 243,918, it is the 12th-largest city in Poland and the second-largest in th ...

. Construction of the line started in 1920 and in 1922 connected Kutno to Płock's southern suburb of Radziwie, by 1934 the segment between Płock and Sierpc was opened. A tender for the construction of the bridge was held in 1936, won two companies, " Konstanty Rudzki i Spółka" and "Przedsiębiorstwo Robót Inżynieryjnych – Leszek Muszyński", which started work on the bridge from both ends by 1937 and finished in 1938 in a record 20 months. The project faced unique engineering challenges due to the high

escarpment An escarpment is a steep slope or long cliff that forms as a result of faulting or erosion and separates two relatively level areas having different elevations. The terms ''scarp'' and ''scarp face'' are often used interchangeably with ''esca ...

on the right bank of the river in Płock, which was solved by having the bridge rise 8 meters from the bridgehead located on the flat left bank and each span individually designed. At 649 meters at the time of its opening it was longest bridge in Poland. On December 19, 1938 the bridge was formally christened the Bridge of the Legions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski. Following the

German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...

at the beginning of

World War 2 World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the bridge was blown up by the retreating Polish Army in September 1939. By 1943 the bridge was restored by occupying Germans, and once again blown by them 1943, and restored in 1950. It underwent major renovation in 1979, 1994 and 2019. In 2007 the Solidarity Bridge was built as a second road bridge in Płock forming a bypass of the city center. The Legions of Marshal Józef Piłsudski Bridge in

is the longest

illuminated Illuminated may refer to: * "Illuminated" (song), by Hurts * Illuminated Film Company, a British animation house * ''Illuminated'', alternative title of Black Sheep (Nat & Alex Wolff album) * Illuminated manuscript See also * Illuminate (disambi ...

bridge in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

. Road-rail bridges Railway bridges in Poland Bridges completed in 1938 Bridges in Płock Road bridges in Poland {{Poland-bridge-struct-stub