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Boating on the River Odra


Pluto

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There are some interesting photos and interviews about inland shipping on the River Odra in Poland on the website: http://www.statekdomem.fomt.pl/ It is in Polish, so really needs a web translator. I worked with the museum in Wroclaw (Breslau) some years ago, and put on an exhibition of some of the photos. May were taken in the 1950s, and give a very good insight into inland navigation on the river at that time. The museum's preserved steam tug is shown at work in the 1950s below.

Nadbor at work.jpg

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A couple of questions:

 

Those two barges being pulled have wheelhouses - are they unpowered or are they underpowered for the Oder? 

 

They look loaded but are not heaped with cargo - carrying steel perhaps? Coal often shows above the combings if a boat is fully loaded

 

What was the character of the Oder then? extensive navigation works or entirely natural? 

 

I might see if I can find an excuse to see it for myself sometime.... :) 

 

Edited to add - I see they had "Big" and "Little" Wroclaw class barges, both were quite a bit larger than the Woolwich equivalents!

 

 

 

Edited by magpie patrick
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On barges of this size, a wheelhouse was the norm, even when unpowered. The Oder from the Baltic to around Brzeg is just a river with training walls, with locks being provided above, the earliest dating from the 18th century, although enlarged today. There is a lock on the lower section, below the Oder-Havel Canal at Hohensatten, where the gate lifts and turns through 90 degrees. This was built during the DDR time, on a site with poor ground conditions. By turning the gate through 90 degrees, the structure does not have to be that high, thus reducing the foundation size. The photo shows the gate closed, and the guide track. The other photo shows the Gliwice Canal from the late 18th century. It was replaced in the 1930s by the Adolf Hitler Canal, which was originally designed to form a link to the Danube.

1994 Hohensaarten 493.jpg

Gliwice5.jpg

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