Rendsburg High Bridge — Brückenterrassen Quay

The quay beside the Brückenterrassen restaurant and the Schiffsbegrüßungsanlage, the ship-greeting station, sits directly beneath the Rendsburg High Bridge on the Kiel Canal. The nearest track on the bridge is about 37 m (120 ft) away, and you see the steel viaduct side-on: the line of sight to it runs at about 253 degrees, square to the bridge's north-north-west to south-south-east axis. Trains cross 42 m (138 ft) above the water, high overhead, so a short telephoto or a wide lens pointed upward both work. The line is the main rail link between Germany and Denmark: Regional-Express RE 7 trains between Hamburg and Flensburg run hourly, EuroCity trains between Hamburg and Copenhagen every two hours, and freight trains up to 835 m long use it too. Between trains there are the ships: from 10 a.m. until dusk the greeting station salutes passing vessels by dipping their national flag and playing their anthem, and the transporter ferry hangs from the bridge above the water.

The quay sits right on the Kiel Canal (Nord-Ostsee-Kanal), under the lattice steel of a bridge that stands 68 m (223 ft) high overall. The transporter ferry, the Schwebefähre, runs on cables slung beneath the rail deck, and container ships, tankers and cruise ships pass close to the quay. The restaurant terrace next door is private, but the quay and the greeting station are open ground.

Before the high bridge, two single-track swing bridges about 700 m (2,300 ft) apart crossed the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal here, each one stopping either trains or ships. When the canal was widened, the engineer Friedrich Voß designed a fixed crossing high enough for shipping. Built between 1911 and 1913 from 17,740 tonnes of steel and 3.2 million rivets, it opened on October 1, 1913; at completion it was described as the heaviest steel construction in the world, and at 2,486 m (1.54 mi) of steel structure it remained Germany's longest railway bridge for 99 years. Because Rendsburg station lies at ground level, the line reaches the bridge through the Rendsburger Schleife, a loop about 4.5 km (2.8 mi) long at a gradient of about 12 per mille. The transporter ferry beneath the bridge opened on December 2, 1913; the original was wrecked by a collision with a cargo ship on January 8, 2016, and a new ferry entered service on March 4, 2022.

A railway bridge, a transporter ferry hanging from it and a ship-greeting station that salutes every passing vessel with its national anthem, all in one place on the Kiel Canal. Few places let you watch an international main line and ocean-going ships cross each other at right angles, 42 m apart vertically.