Canal lift & Incline Plain in Belgium 2003
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- The usual method of overcoming altitude changes on a navigable river or canal is by one or more locks. When the change in height is so great as to make a locks impracticable and boat lift or an incline plane are two of the options used. This video shows both types in action.
The Strépy-Thieu boat lift lies on a branch of the Canal du Centre in the municipality of Le Rœulx, Hainaut, Belgium. With a height difference of 73.15 metres (240.0 ft) between the upstream and downstream reaches, it was the tallest boat lift in the world, and remained so until the Three Gorges dam boat lift in China was completed in January 2016.
The Ronquières Inclined Plane is a Belgian canal inclined plane on the Brussels-Charleroi Canal in the province of Hainaut. It has a length of 1,432 metres (4,698 ft) and lifts boats through 67.73 metres (222.2 ft)[2] vertically. It consists of two large caissons mounted on rails. Each caisson measures 91 metres (299 ft) long by 12 metres (39 ft) wide and has a water depth between 3 and 3.70 metres (9.8 and 12.1 ft). It can carry a boat up to 1,350 tonnes or smaller boats within the same limits. Each caisson can be moved between the two canal levels at a speed of 1.2 metres per second (3.9 ft/s), taking about 22 minutes. It takes 50 minutes in total to pass through the 1,800 metres (5,900 ft) of the entire structure, including the raised canal bridge at the top end.
Very interesting document.
I am from Belgium. Boat lifts is typically a Belgian speciality. The first ones were built at the end of XIXth century in Houdeng-Gœgnies on the Canal du Centre and I saw them when I was a little boy. I was filled with admiration.
10 years after I visited the Plan incliné de Ronquières. Fine engineering also but, as I'm an old nostalgic guy, I preferred the old lifts of Houdeng-Gœgnies.
And now, with your video, I see for the first time the Strépy-Thieu lift and, dawn, I must now go and see this monument. Thank you to have shown that.
Thank you for your comments and interest.
It didn’t change much since 2009, when I was at Strepy Tieu lift. Still very impressive machine. Video well done.
For honest commercial commerce trade …. And not the tea and tourist trade …
Wow! That's moving something . . what a device! Hope it has a lightning conductor :)
wheel heaven!
Only 16,000 tons in motion
Painfully slow and cumbersome way to transport goods and people
bogoto247 Strange comment. How do you propose they transfer the rivercraft from one level to another? These boats keep dozens of lorries off the roads.
Those boats don't transport people, just a family or handfull of crew members.
On privately owned boats like those in the video the captain lives with his familly, but this is becoming rarer now as most larger boats are in the hands of larger companies now.
These canal boats and barges are usually used to transport low value bulk goods like coal, sand, gravel, ore and grain, also liqiud chemicals are transported by special canal tankers.
Those goods usually need an ongoing supply to the same customers, so the speed of transport is not important, as long as regular supply is not interupted.
The transport by ship/barge is very cheap as fuel consumption is the lowest per ton for this form of transport.
Further do Belgium and the Netherlands still have a good network of canals and rivers, the main arteries being upgraded to allow for larger barges and ships.
The Rhine river and main canals connecting to this allow for combinations of pusher with 2x3 barges, total capacity 18.000 tons, it would take 5 trains or 520 trucks to move the same amount of bulk cargo.
The barge combination has 6000hp, the 5 trains are powered by 2 locomotives each of 8700hp each, so 87000hp for the total amount.
The trucks have 450hp on average, times 520 gives 234000hp to move the same amount, so the fuel consumption of the barges is almost 40 times less than the trucks and 13x less than for the train, and we didn't look to the amount of people employed to move that amount yet.
So even when a canal has a lot of locks or a boat lift like here, which take up quite some extra time, the expenditure on fuel and man hours is much lower for heavy bulk goods transported over water, even with the smaller 1350 ton boats which are allowed into this lift.
Thanks @@Tom-Lahaye - clearly explained and a great example of what we are capable when we put our minds to it!
@@Tom-Lahaye I would also argue that describing the lift as 'painfully slow' is quite a moronic remark. Lifting that kind of weight in only 7 minutes is pretty darn fast, and a feat of engeneering if you ask me.
@@TheRaoul Agree, you just have to compare with the time it will take to get trough a chain of at least four locks to bridge the same amount of height, that would cost at least one hour, so 7 minutes is damn fast.
Canal shipping is anyway a continuous proces in a lot of cases, an ongoing transportation of bulk goods (iron ore, coal, sand, gravel) from a sea port or inland harbour to customers in a frequent manner, and as long as this chain isn't interrupted the time for a single transport doesn't matter.
Canal shipping is a cheap and eco friendly manner to transport heavy bulk goods, it would take 40-50 truckloads to transport the same tonnage as a vessel capable to use this lift, and those trucks would burn 20 times as much fuel to do so.