3-011-896 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The War in Denmark: ruins of the Langaa Railway Bridge, in Jutland, lately destroyed by the Prussians, 1864. 'The most uncivilised thing the Prussians have done in Jutland is the blowing up of the great iron railway-bridge at Langaa, a few miles south-west from Randers, on the line to Viborg...General Hegermann...was inexorable. He had given his word that he would destroy the line if there were not trains ready to run at the end of the armistice, and his word he would keep. An engineer officer was sent to blow up Langaa Bridge, a costly iron one of a single span across the River Guden...The work of destruction has been most completely done, at no small expense of powder, for the bridge was built, as English engineers are wont to build, with solidity and strength. A first explosion did but partly succeed. After blowing up the buttresses, one of the tubular girders was blown up with a charge of 60 lb. of powder'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.