Finland Railway Bridge

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Finland Bridge

The Finland Railway Bridge (Russian: Финля́ндский железнодоро́жный мост) is a bridge across the Neva River in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Actually, there are two bridges very close to each other sharing the same name.

The first bridge was built in 1910-1912 by engineers Nikolay Appolonovich Belelyubsky, Grigory Grigorievich Krivoshein, I.G. Aleksandrov and architect Vladimir Petrovich Apyshkov. That was steel bridge with two railways and pedestrian passage, 538 meters long. There are four equal spans, 110 meters each and double-flight drawspan in the middle.

The bridge was funded mostly by the Grand Duchy of Finland, and it had strategic value connecting the Finland railway and the Finnish State Railways with Russian Railways.

In 1983 the reefer Komsomolets Tatarii carrying 500 tons of fish hit the bridge. The ship sank few hundrend meters after that, halfway to the Alexander Nevsky Bridge.

In 1983-1987 the new bridge was built in parallel to the existing bridge by engineer O. Rusin. The spans of the new bridge repeat the contours of the existing bridge. The drawspan has one span.

In 1988 the old bridge was closed to traffic because of serious corrosion damage. In 1994 the drawing mechanism was decommisioned.

In 2002-2003, due to the building of Ladozhsky Railway Station, the old bridge was completely overhauled. The new drawing mechanism and drawflights were installed.