Pont de Recouvrance

Pont de Recouvrance
The Pont de Recouvrance from the Tour Tanguy
Carries	Rue de Siam
Crosses	Penfeld River
Locale	Brest, Brittany, France
Design	Vertical-lift bridge
Material	Reinforced concrete, steel
Total length	88m
Height	70m
Construction begin	1950
Construction end	1954
Opened	1954

The pont de Recouvrance is a vertical-lift bridge in Brest, France, across the river Penfeld. Opened on 17 July 1954, it was the largest vertical-lift bridge in Europe until the opening of the Pont Gustave-Flaubert in 2008. It links the bottom of the rue de Siam to the quartier de Recouvrance, replacing a swing bridge (the pont National) destroyed by Allied bombardment in 1944.

Each pylon is 70m high and the 525-tonne moving cradle is 88m long.

The bridge was crossed by trolleybuses from its opening in 1954 until the closure of the Brest trolleybus system, in 1970.^[1]

The moving cradle has been renewed in 2011 in order to allow the future tram line to cross the bridge.

References

^ Haseldine, Peter (July-August 2010). "Two French closures" (40th anniversaries of). Trolleybus Magazine issue 292, pp. 74–75. National Trolleybus Association (UK). ISSN 0266-7452.

Le pont levant de Brest, brochure edited by La Télémécanique Électrique (1954 ?)

Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pont_de_Recouvrance Pont de Recouvrance] at Wikimedia Commons