The Almonte viaduct, world record, front cover of the magazine "Bridge"
The first 2015 edition of the British magazine "Bridge", which specialises in design and engineering, chose one of the works FCC is currently carrying out in Spain for its front cover, consisting of a viaduct being built over the Almonte river in the province of Caceres.
This infrastructure works, part of the development of the high-speed rail network (the Talayuela-Caceres stretch), encompasses a series of characteristics which make it a worldwide point of reference.
The viaduct over the Almonte river will be a bridge with a high-speed arch made of concrete or steel and the largest in the world at 996 metres long and with a 384 metre-long arch-type central span. Furthermore, once it is finished, it will be bigger than the Dashengguan bridge in China which is 336 metres long. In terms of those which are used for trains, although not high-speed ones, it will also be more than 100 metres longer than the concrete bridge over the Froschgrund lake in Germany on the Nuremberg-Erfurt line, which is 270 metres long.
If it is only compared with concrete arch bridges, regardless of railway use, it will be the third largest in the world, only behind the Wanxian bridge in China, which is 420 metres long and "very close" to the biggest of the bridges between the Sveti Marko and Krk islands in Croatia, which is 390 metres long.