Göltzsch Viaduct (Göltzschtalbrücke), Netzschkau

The appeal here is scale, and it is unusual scale. Trains cross 78 m (256 ft) above the valley floor on a structure 574 m (1,883 ft) long, so a two- or three-car Alstom Coradia Continental electric railcar reads as a small moving detail against 98 brick vaults stacked in four tiers. You do not watch the train; you watch the bridge, and the train tells you how big it is. The viaduct sits at km 94,889 of the Bahnstrecke Leipzig–Hof, and the whole route from Leipzig Bayerischer Bahnhof to Hof Hbf is double track and electrified at 15 kV 16.7 Hz, so both directions are live and the catenary masts draw a thin modern line above the 1851 masonry. Line speed is 160 km/h (99 mph) for tilting stock, which means a crossing is over quickly — a train is on the deck for a matter of seconds, and it pays to be set up before you hear it. The rhythm is predictable rather than busy. Die Länderbahn's Vogtlandbahn RB 2 gives an hourly clockface crossing in each direction, calling at Netzschkau 1.2 km (0.8 mi) away at approximately :11 and :50 past the hour under the timetable valid to 12 December 2026, and Mitteldeutsche Regiobahn's Dresden–Hof regional trains add crossings that do not stop. Waiting is comfortable, because the valley is laid out for visitors rather than for railfans: Parkplatz 1 on Brückenstraße has public toilets, an information point with explanatory displays and a photo viewpoint reached by steps, and paved and marked paths lead down towards the piers. Approximately 80,000 people a year come here, so on a summer weekend you share the best angles. The pay-off for the patience is a frame no North American location can offer: a modern electric unit running on four tiers of nineteenth-century brickwork.

The Göltzsch is a small stream in a steep, wooded valley in the northern Vogtland, and the bridge crosses it where the ground falls away hard between two towns that sit on the plateau either side. Netzschkau's railway halt stands at 380 m (1,247 ft) above sea level; the rails on the viaduct are 78 m (256 ft) above the water, so the drop you look up through is roughly the height of a twenty-storey building, held on brick piers that taper from 23 m (75 ft) wide at the foot to 7.93 m (26 ft) at the deck. Mixed woodland comes right up to the masonry, which is why the arcade appears and disappears as you move along the valley floor — there is no single spot from which the whole thing is clear at close range, and the panoramic views come from the hills instead. The Mühlgraben, an old mill channel, and the Göltzsch itself give still water at the bottom, and the structure is floodlit at night, so the reflection is a recognised subject. Two landmarks anchor the setting: Burg Mylau, a castle 1.6 km (1.0 mi) east on the Mylau side, and Schloss Netzschkau, a late-Gothic residential castle of about 1490, only 0.9 km (0.6 mi) south. The 11.9 km (7.4 mi) Göltzschtal-Rundweg circular walk ties them together with 258 m (846 ft) of climb and 264 m (866 ft) of descent through woodland, field paths and a ridge Höhenweg that opens panoramas over Mylau's castle and church, and the waymarked Vogtland Panorama Weg long-distance route also passes the bridge. Spring brings flowering meadows on the open slopes, autumn turns the valley sides gold behind the red brick, and winter frost and morning fog are what local photographers wait for.

The Sächsisch-Bayerische Eisenbahn-Compagnie announced a design competition on 27 January 1845 with a prize of 1,000 Thaler. Eighty-one designs came in and not one could be shown to stand up, so the prize money was eventually split among four entrants. One of the surviving competition sheets is held by Hessen Kassel Heritage as inventory GS 16799: Johann Daniel Wilhelm Eduard Engelhard's 1845 'Göltzschtal, Entwurf zu einer Eisenbahnbrücke, seitlicher Aufriß, Längsschnitt und Grundriß der Pfeiler', drawn in graphite and black pen on card at 63.8 by 47.4 cm with a scale bar in Dresdner Fuß. The executed design came instead from Professor Johann Andreas Schubert (1808–1870), who had chaired that same jury, and who sized the structure using line-of-thrust theory — German Wikipedia calls the result the first statically calculated bridge in the world, which is the substantive claim behind the popular story rather than the myth that Schubert simply won a contest. Groundbreaking was on 31 May 1846. The bridge opened on 15 July 1851 and cost 2.2 million Thaler. It consumed 26,021,000 bricks in the Dresden format of 27.7 by 13.6 by 6.5 cm, giving 135,676 cubic metres of masonry. Its slightly smaller sister on the same line, the Elstertalbrücke at 68 m (223 ft) high and using 12,323,000 bricks, was also designed by Schubert and was inaugurated on the very same day, 15 July 1851, by King Friedrich August of Saxony. Both are listed cultural monuments. In June 2009 the Bundesingenieurkammer named the Göltzschtalbrücke a Historisches Wahrzeichen der Ingenieurbaukunst in Deutschland, publishing a monograph on it as volume 2 of that series. On 28 September 2021 the Free State of Saxony put the bridge forward for UNESCO World Heritage listing, announced in Dresden by regional minister Thomas Schmidt.

This is the largest brick-built bridge in the world, and the numbers are what make the visit worth planning around. Ninety-eight vaults are stacked in four tiers; twenty-nine of them are in the top tier alone. The clear spans widen as they rise, from 11.34 m (37 ft) at the bottom to 14.16 m (46 ft) higher up, and the upper middle arch reaches 30.87 m (101 ft). The deck is 7.93 m (26 ft) wide where the piers are 23 m (75 ft) across at the foot. The 26,021,000 bricks were laid in five years, between 31 May 1846 and 15 July 1851. A second superlative sits 9.4 km (5.9 mi) away on the same railway: the Elstertalbrücke is the world's second-largest brick bridge, it was designed by the same engineer, and it opened on the same day — the two are deliberately linked on the ground by a 17 km (10.6 mi) Brückenwanderweg bridge trail, a rail-heritage walk with no direct equivalent anywhere else. The engineering pedigree is formally recognised twice over: a Bundesingenieurkammer engineering-landmark designation in June 2009, and a Saxon nomination for UNESCO World Heritage on 28 September 2021. What separates this from a preserved monument is that the railway never stopped. The line was electrified between 2010 and 2013, with the Reichenbach–Herlasgrün section including the viaduct finished in December 2011 and requiring extensive work on the then 165-year-old masonry, and trains cross at up to 160 km/h (99 mph) under 15 kV 16.7 Hz catenary. Approximately 80,000 visitors a year come to look up at it, which for a working piece of railway infrastructure with no ticket office is a remarkable figure.