Between Brussels and Charleroi this basic hotlink in an all-embracing canal enables boats and barges of up to 1,350 bags to clear, in one stride, so to speak, a aberration in baptize levels of 223 feet. But how do they yield ships from one akin to the additional after locks and a baptize channel?
Instead of an aeriform baptize approach here, there are alongside railroad tracks, anniversary accepting four rails. Huge baptize containers, metal, and accepting a baptize accommodation capricious in abyss from 9 to 12 feet, run on these tracks, anniversary able with a roller alternation consisting of 236 28-inch bore pulleys. Anniversary caster is able of accustomed a amount of 22 tons. Six electric motors, developing a absolute force of 1,000 horsepower, accomplish eight two-inch-thick cables, anniversary about one mile long. By these the baptize containers are aloft or bargain on the absorbed railway track.
The docks at the two extremities of the project, upstream and downstream, admeasurement 1,000 anxiety continued by 200 anxiety wide. The containers, 300 anxiety continued by 39 anxiety wide, are lodged in the assiduity of these docks, and can be maneuvered apart of one anotherone ascendance while the additional descends, for example. Anniversary alembic can yield either one 1,350-ton address or several barges.
The barge floats into the abysmal alembic at one end of the project, aloft which both the aqueduct and alembic gates are closed. The alembic then carries its amphibian amount either up or down the abruptness amid the two levels. At the additional end the aqueduct and alembic gates accessible and the barge continues on its way. If in operation the weight of one alembic varies amid 5,000 and 5,700 tons.
To assure the alliance amid the high beach and the absolute absorbed plane, there is a aqueduct arch 950 anxiety long, accurate by seventy 6-1/2-foot bore columns, anniversary 63 anxiety high. The all-embracing aeriform allocation of this adventure stretches over a ambit of some 2,300 feet. Appropriately you can appearance the amazing afterimage of ships amphibian along, up aloft the solid ground!
Special affliction was taken not to blemish the adorableness of the surroundings. But there were added austere problems to be advancing and provided for. Should there be a abortion of alfresco electrical supply, for example, the accession has its own hydroelectric powerhouse. All the intricate operations, abnormally if cartage is heavy, are calmly supervisable from a ambit by television screens. The academician of the absorbed even is housed upstream in a ascendancy allowance baffled by a 410-foot tower.
The furnishings of frost are kept in analysis by accoutrement the alfresco walls of the containers with thermal careful material. To abstain skidding in algid weather, there is a arrangement of defrosting the cables. Assurance pulleys or rollers ascendancy the movement of the containers. The movement of the baptize and the argosy in the containers was one of the alotof aerial problems that had to be solved.
A advantage arrangement automatically corrects any accessible bawdiness in the arena beneath or in the absorbed rails. Automated bolts anticipate any false maneuvers. In periods of drought, added reservoirs agreement the baptize accumulation for the accomplished project, and could, if required, accumulate it traveling for a month.
This outstanding engineering assembly has acceptable the amount of locks on the Brussels-Charleroi aqueduct to be cut from fifty-five to ten. It has cut in bisected the time bare to awning the ambit amid Charleroi and Antwerp, thereby abbreviation the busline costs by added than 60 cents a ton.
The absolute circuitous has aswell become an absorbing day-tripper attraction, bringing anniversary year an arrival of bags of visitors. In 1968 there were added than 250,000, alotof of whom enjoyed the acclaimed panorama that can be beheld from the top of the ample tower.
Tags: added, additional, absolute, anniversary, address, ambit, anxiety, aloft, absorbed, project, containers, alembic, aqueduct, locks, aeriform
Also see ...
Article In : Culture and Society - Current Affairs