Workers dismantled the railway bridge in Prague near the Exhibition Grounds; it will be sent to a museum

Prague – Workers dismantled the railway bridge on Saturday, which had stood near the Exhibition Grounds in Prague 7. The railway viaduct from the so-called Buštěhrad railway is being removed due to the modernization of the line from Prague to Kladno and Václav Havel Airport, which is being worked on by the Railway Administration. The bridge will be newly displayed in the area of the former locomotive depot at Masaryk Station in Prague, where a new exhibition about railways and electrical engineering is being established. It arrived at its new location on Sunday, announced Eva Schreierová, the site manager for the contractor, to ČTK.

Around 2:00 PM, builders removed the bridge structure from the ceramic plinths using a crane and temporarily placed it in the nearby Strojnická Street. They will still be removing metal components from the bridge today and cleaning it. A specialized transporter will take the bridge to the railway station in Prague 1, leaving Strojnická Street around 5:00 AM on Sunday. "Once it arrives at the future museum, the bridge will be placed on temporary supports. Eventually, it will stand in the museum on stone piers, just as it did at the Exhibition Grounds. However, we will probably be dismantling the supports for about a week,” said Schreierová.

Due to the dismantling of the bridge, trams will not run from today until midnight from Monday, April 24, to Tuesday, April 25, between the Strossmayerovo náměstí and Výstaviště stops. No replacement bus transport will be provided.

The National Technical Museum is preparing a new exhibition about railways and electrical engineering in the area of the former locomotive depot at Masaryk Station in Prague. The current owner, the Railway Administration, will hand over the 19th-century bridge structure. According to the site manager, the steel bridge, which is about 19.5 meters long and weighs 35 tons, was constructed by the bridge builder František Prášil. He is also the builder of the Čech and Vyšehrad railway bridges over the Vltava. The bridge from the Exhibition Grounds on its original plinths is expected to be complemented by a locomotive at the museum exhibition, Schreierová stated.

The removal of the bridge, over which trains have been operating for more than 130 years, is part of the modernization of the line from Prague to Kladno and Václav Havel Airport. The change and completion of the railway in these sections is a priority of the current government, according to previous statements by Minister of Transport Martin Kupka (ODS).

In mid-March, a two-year closure began between Bubny and Dejvice, which is part of the modernization of the Kladno - Prague line divided into eight sections. So far, only one has been completed, namely the Negrelli Viaduct, which opened in 2020. The main goal of the project, according to the Railway Administration, is to modernize the Prague-Bubny station, expand the line by approximately 1.3 kilometers to two tracks, and construct a new stop at Prague-Výstaviště.

Construction of three bridge viaducts and a new station building in Bubny is expected to start in May, according to the Railway Administration. According to representatives of the state-owned enterprise, it will be completed in 2025. The original station building in Prague's Bubny is expected to become a memorial site with a permanent exhibition about the deportation of Jews from Prague during the Protectorate, according to the organization Memorial of Silence.

The modernization of the entire line between the Czech capital and Kladno is expected to be completed in 2029 or 2030, at an estimated cost of about 40 billion crowns. The construction contractor is a consortium of companies Metrostav TBR, OHLA ŽS, and Electrification of Railways Prague.