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The Fonseranes boat lift..


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Really good video - I've been and crawled all over that thing myself about 4 years ago, and many years ago saw the one at Montech.

 

This is the video Tim refers to - I'm not sure whether I'd have been impressed or worried using the slope - I can help imagine the concrete trough wearing a hole in the boat

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mtcqRl2KY

 

 

 

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42 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

Really good video - I've been and crawled all over that thing myself about 4 years ago, and many years ago saw the one at Montech.

 

This is the video Tim refers to - I'm not sure whether I'd have been impressed or worried using the slope - I can help imagine the concrete trough wearing a hole in the boat

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mtcqRl2KY

 

 

 

 

Thanks for that.

 

There does seem to be several ways one could lose a body part or two using that!

 

Typical France.

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26 minutes ago, BlueStringPudding said:

Great video! I would really have liked to have a go on that. Although maybe not when the tracks were lubricated with leaked oil 🤔😃

 

He's worth following on You Tube, his videos are short and succinct and peppered with some wry humor.

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7 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

He's worth following on You Tube, his videos are short and succinct and peppered with some wry humor.

I like his style, no aimless woffling, succinct and entertaining. I see that he has one about steam trains so I may hav a look.

s

We've "done|" the Montech slope both h ways, but using the flight of locks. Wiki reckon that the actual slope is supposed to be open again by now; well  yes, , it appears to be open, but not working

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14 minutes ago, Athy said:

I like his style, no aimless woffling, succinct and entertaining. I see that he has one about steam trains so I may hav a look.

s

We've "done|" the Montech slope both h ways, but using the flight of locks. Wiki reckon that the actual slope is supposed to be open again by now; well  yes, , it appears to be open, but not working

 

He's done a lot of stuff in France. Including a couple of abandoned French railways and the Aerotrain.

 

 

 

 

Edited by The Happy Nomad
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I've seen the future solving of the Bedford to Milton Keynes link.

Cross this idea with the Snowdon mountain railway, and the Anderton lift, and up Brougbrough hill you go!

Cassion on wheels, pushed/pulled up by a rack and pinion locomotive.  No slippage problems there.

 

Bod

 

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48 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

He's done a lot of stuff in France. Including a couple of abandoned French railways and the Aerotrain.

 

 

 

 

Quite a discovery! I've just watched the one about the Aérotrain and his visit to France's least used station.

 

When I used to work in France, my train route from Paris to Limoges and beyond took me past what I thought was an aqueduct, , but which wa apparently a disused high speed train test track, not the one in his video though.

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If you think Montech and Fonserannes are eccentric, have a look at https://patents.google.com/patent/US955317A/en which is for Pietro Caminada's system for crossing the Alps. His Wiki page put me on to Andreas Teuscher: Schweiz am Meer – Pläne für den „Central-Hafen“ Europas inklusive Alpenüberquerung im 20. Jahrhundert. Limmat Verlag, Zürich 2014, which looks at the various projects to link the Rhine, Danube, Rhone and the Mediterranean in the 20th century. I would say, To boldly go where no canal has gone before, but there was the Canal d'Entreroches, built in the 17th century. Though never completed, part was still in use into the 19th v=century.

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You would think something like this would work with fixed winches and wire ropes,instead of moving hundreds of tons up and down ......if the thing failed,it would be a tossup between the boat simply settling (at angle) 0nto the concrete floor......or riding a tidal wave at 100mph at the bottom?......Of course there are similar devices that raise a giant tub of water up and down the slope with a boat floating in it......or others that simply direct lift the tub and boat.

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Here's the Strepy Thierre in Walloon, Belgium, 73m in one go. We've done this in our narrowboat several times, often it was operated just for us. It replaced the 4 Anderton type lifts, designed by the same engineer, Edwin Clark, as the one on the Weaver. They had become too small and slow for the growing traffic on the canal. We've done those too as they were continued to be operated for leisure craft. 

 

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21 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

 

And another one.

Often queues of commercials at this one although it too was done just for us in August when most of the big stuff had moored up for a month's break. We commented on the difference with the UK canals in the height of summer as in Belgium we often cruised without meeting another boat. Most leisure boats, rather like cars, get through Belgium as quickly as poss. on their way to France. This left the gorgeous architecture of Flanders and the wild Ardennes in the south for us to explore on peaceful canals. 

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8 hours ago, wandering snail said:

Often queues of commercials at this one although it too was done just for us in August when most of the big stuff had moored up for a month's break. We commented on the difference with the UK canals in the height of summer as in Belgium we often cruised without meeting another boat. Most leisure boats, rather like cars, get through Belgium as quickly as poss. on their way to France. This left the gorgeous architecture of Flanders and the wild Ardennes in the south for us to explore on peaceful canals. 

This is the only example of what was originally a narrow canal being enlarged, on several occasions, over its lifetime. Part of one of the early tunnels can still be found, but little else from earlier times.

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2 hours ago, Pluto said:

This is the only example of what was originally a narrow canal being enlarged, on several occasions, over its lifetime. Part of one of the early tunnels can still be found, but little else from earlier times.

'Narrow' on the continent being at least GU width, normally much more. My avatar is us on the Gent-Terneuzen, dug out in the beginning of the 19th century and enormous. There is however one canal near Paris that reminded us of 'home', the Canal l'Ourcq. Rarely used because it's so narrow but that suited us until the blanket weed finally beat us! There was a marvellous 'trompe-l'oeil' piece of work by a library at the side of the canal. Picture%2B0325.jpg

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1 minute ago, wandering snail said:

'Narrow' on the continent being at least GU width, normally much more. There is one canal near Paris that reminded us of 'home', the Canal l'Ourcq. No-one uses it because it's so narrow but that suited us until the blanket weed finally beat us! There was a marvellous 'trompe-l'oeil' piece of work by a library at the side of the canal. 

There were at least three reasonably long narrow canals (3m wide) in France [Canal de l'Ourcq, Canal du Berry and the Canal de la Sauldre, as well as a couple of feeders to wider canals], two in Belgium [Canal Meuse-Moselle and Canal de Charleroi], one in Bavaria [Naab Navigation], one in Austria [Weiner Neustadt Canal], and 9 or 10 in America, most of these latter being converted to wide canals within 20 years of opening. There were also numerous river navigations used by boats smaller than narrowboats, and that isn't taking into consideration the small canal in The Netherland and the wetlands in France. In France, after the Napoleonic Wars, there were plans for a national canal system which would have included around 1,000 KM of narrow and tub boat canals. You can read about these canals in my latest book.

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