It may look like something from a Star Wars set, but just because they built a taller one in China doesn’t make the Strépy-Thieu boat lift any less impressive. To get a better idea of scale, look closely at the lower road and find the tourist train.
It’s certainly a very easy way for us to climb to the top of a hill using only a boat, and something of a monument to engineers and of course to a certain Mr Archimedes, without whom the calculation of counterweight sizes would not be possible.
There are lots of facts and statistics that are very easy to find if that’s what floats your boat, the least of them or perhaps the most important depending on your perspective is that the height of the lift is seventy-four metres, and that the vertically moving watertight gates are designed to withstand a 5 km/h impact from a 2000-tonne vessel.
This is only reassuring until one starts to wonder about the consequences of a 2010 tonne vessel failing to stop while the basin was at the top. There is a flood gate a few kilometres away which would stop Belgium emptying completely, but the thought of ships both small and large plummeting over a seventy-four metre waterfall and tumbling through flooded towns below is an entertaining one, if one isn’t a passenger on one of those vessels at the time it happens.
Anyone wishing to visit can ride the lift for a nominal fee, and there’s a little train ride and a ferry too which would ask for a couple of other nominal fees but pleasure boats, presumably because they are part of the attraction are not charged at all.
Therefore it would make a certain amount of sense for those more than mildly curious, to track us down next time we are passing and we’ll be happy to provide the thrill of a lifetime.
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