Railway Viaduct Pesnica

Within the railway between Vienna and Trieste in the middle of the 19th century, a 649-meter-long viaduct with 64 arches over the Pesnica Plain was completed in 1846. The viaduct was built of stone and brick and founded on wooden piles. Allegedly due to the groundwater level reduction, the viaduct began to sink and the viaduct gradually backfilled to embankment. By 1908, the entire viaduct had been turned into a continuous embankment. Even today the embankment still has stability problems, therefore the Owner decided to slightly shift the railway route and build a new parallel viaduct.

The new Pesnica viaduct will be 912-meter-long, relatively low, double-track railway viaduct. It is designed as a series of frame structures connected into an integral structure without bearings. Due to the seismic resistance design, hydraulic devices (STU - shock transmission unit) will be installed between the frames to reduce deformations and transfer forces for instant loads, such as braking force and earthquake.

This design concept allows the implementation of a continuous welded rail track (CWR) without expansion joints, with great advantages in terms of traffic safety, economy, sustainability and noise emissions. In terms of architectural design, the structural design is logic, transparent and neutral to the environment in its appearance. Construction work on a new railway viaduct across the Pesnica river valley near Maribor started in October 2020, the execution deadline is 30 months.