Huge thunderstorm during the night with rain like we haven’t seen for a long time. Rain coming in the window, so had to shut it. When we got up this morning, it was humid but clear. First stop today was the impressive inclined lift for canal barges (yes canal stuff again!) at Ronquieres.
GPS said turn right. I don’t think so!
It is on the Brussels-Charleroi Canal and opened in April 1968. It takes the place of 14 locks. I’ve lifted the description below from Wikipedia, why re-invent the wheel.
The Ronquières Inclined Plane has a length of 1,432 metres (4,698 ft) and lifts boats through 67.73 metres (222.2 ft) 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 one boat of 1,350 tonnes or many smaller boats within the same limits.
Each caisson has a 5,200-tonne counterweight running in the trough below the rails, which permits the caissons to be moved independently of the other. Each caisson is pulled by 8 cables wound by winches located at the top end of the inclined plane. Each cable is 1,480 metres (4,860 ft) long.
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.
We had thought we’d spend half an hour or 1 hour there, but there were great views, ordinary coffee and a fantastic museum of canal life, so we were there for over 3 hours. It was great.
The next stop planned (it was now close to 4pm) was the Strepy- Thieu funicular lift (yes, more canal stuff). Definition of funicular: (of a railway, especially one on a mountainside) operating by cable with ascending and descending cars counterbalanced. Again, here are details from Wikipedia.
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 boat lift was designed during the Canal du Centre's modernisation program in order to replace a system of two locks and four 16-metre lifts dating from 1888 to 1919. The canal itself began operations in 1879 and its locks and lifts were able to accommodate vessels of up to 300 tonnes. By the 1960s, this was no longer adequate for the new European standard of 1350 tonnes for barge traffic, and a replacement was sought.
Construction of the lift commenced in 1982 and was not completed until 2002 at an estimated cost of € 160 million), but once operational, permitted river traffic of up to the new 1350-tonne standard.
The structure at Strépy-Thieu consists of two independent counterweighted caissons which travel vertically between the upstream and downstream sections. Due to Archimedes' Principle, the caissons weigh the same whether they are laden with a boat or simply contain water. In practice, variations in the water level mean that the mass of each caisson varies between 7200 and 8400 tonnes. The caissons have useful dimensions of 112 m by 12 m and a water depth of between 3.35 and 4.15 m. Each caisson is supported by 112 suspension cables (for counterbalance) and 32 control cables (for lifting/lowering), each of 85 mm diameter. Four electric motors power eight winches per caisson via speed-reduction gearboxes and the 73.15-metre lift is completed in seven minutes.
It’s an impressive structure, but there was so much more to see at Ronquieres.
At around 5pm, we headed off for a 1 hour drive to Cambrai for the night. 2 separate lots of roadworks on the motorway added another 3/4 hour, so we were pleased to find our hotel. Took a while because we didn’t have an exact address and the hotel had changed names.
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