The first bridge was the work of the Rhenish Railway Company, which had opened a line between Osterrath and Essen in 1866 to connect Ruhr coal mines to its mostly west-bank network. Until then, trains crossed the river by ferry. The Prussian military had long opposed fixed Rhine bridges outside fortified cities - too useful to an invader - but by 1869 that opinion was softening, and the railway company immediately applied for permission. The concession came on 29 July 1871, with terms that read like a war manual: chambers for mines were to be built into all bridge piers, defensive towers were to stand at both ends, swing bridges at the main span ends could be activated in wartime to make the crossing impassable, train ferry facilities were to be dismantled, and the company was to pay 300 thalers to the government for two military gunboats. Construction began in 1872. Despite two floods, the double-track bridge was finished in two years. The main span used four arch trusses, each 98 meters long, built from 2,800 tons of wrought iron forged by Jacobi, Haniel and Huyssen at Oberhausen - the firm that would later become GHH. Freight crossed for the first time on 24 December 1873.

By 1910 the heavy trains were already damaging the bridge, and plans for a replacement were being drafted in early 1914. The First World War interrupted them. The bridge kept running through the war and into the chaotic occupation of the Ruhr that followed it. On 30 June 1923, during that occupation, a time bomb exploded as a Belgian military train was crossing. Eight people died. Several more were injured. The bridge held, but the message - that strategic infrastructure in a contested region attracts sabotage - had been delivered with absolute clarity. Construction of a second bridge finally began in 1925. It was commissioned on 13 October 1927, built a few meters downstream of the first, with a navigation clearance nearly 180 meters wide and main spans of 126 and 189 meters. The old 1873 structure was demolished on the river side to keep shipping clear. The steel was supplied by Friedrich-Alfred-Huette of Krupp at Rheinhausen and by Harkort of Duisburg. The total length, including the 19-span brick viaduct over the western flood plain, was 907 meters.

The second bridge lasted seventeen years before the next war reached it. On 22 May 1944, a single bomb made the eastern end impassable. The adjacent Krupp factory, working at extraordinary speed under wartime pressure, built a temporary bridge and temporary piers within 17 days, and rail traffic resumed. The repair held until 4 March 1945, when retreating German troops blew up the entire bridge as they fell back across the Rhine. The central river pier was completely destroyed. For two months the river at this point had no railway crossing at all, only the wreckage of one - twisted girders and submerged piers, with the western front line creeping closer.

The American 332nd Engineer General Service Regiment, part of ADSEC Engineer Group A, arrived at the river immediately after the army crossing. They began work on a replacement railway bridge and finished it - 2,815 feet of bridge across the Rhine - in six days, fifteen hours, and twenty minutes. They named it the Victory Bridge. It was completed on 8 May 1945, the same day Germany surrendered, and rail traffic resumed on 12 May. The ramps were built across the marshalling yards of Krupp and the German railways, partly from the abundant debris littering both sides of the river. It was not meant to last. It was meant to work, immediately, in a country that needed everything moved at once.

In August 1945 work began on recovering the remains of the destroyed 1927 superstructure. Almost half of the old steel was usable, and engineers incorporated it - in its original form - directly into the new permanent bridge. The fourth bridge opened on 1 October 1949, and it is the one still in service today. Freight trains cross it daily, along with Regionalbahn services RB 31 Der Niederrheiner and RB 33 Rhein-Niers-Bahn, and the RE 2 Rhein-Haard-Express. On the northern side a wide footpath carries pedestrians and cyclists across the river. Look closely from below and you can still see the seams: the new metal joined to the salvaged 1927 trusses, the rebuilt piers standing among the older foundations, a working bridge made from the wreckage of its predecessor. The Rhine has been carrying trains across this exact stretch of water since 1873. Each generation has rebuilt what the last one destroyed.