Les Fontinettes boat lift
The ship lift Les Fontinettes ( French Ascenseur des Fontinettes ) is located near the eponymous district of Arques near Saint-Omer in the French department of Pas-de-Calais . It connected the river Aa with the Canal de Neuffossé over a height difference of 13 meters.
History and description
The ship lift , unique in France, was intended to replace a five-step lock staircase. It was built from 1885 to 1888 on the model of the Anderton ship lift in England , which was completed a few years earlier, and worked on the same hydraulic principle. However, it was designed much larger in order to be able to transport the standardized barges used on the French canals ( Péniches of the Freycinet class). The total weight to be lifted for each trough was around 800 tons, almost three times that of Anderton.
Les Fontinettes had already learned from some of the problems Anderton had encountered. For example, the troughs were not lowered directly into the underwater, but into a dry pit that was separated from the underwater by a lifting gate. This way, the piston and cylinder did not come into direct contact with the canal water. But the load on the foundations was underestimated here, so that they slowly sank under the weight of the troughs. After only six years of operation, a general overhaul was necessary, during which the existing old lock staircase was put back into operation.
In 1967, the Écluse des Fontinettes shaft lock went into operation in the immediate vicinity , and the lift and lock staircase were finally shut down. The ship lift has not been preserved as a museum and can be visited during the summer season.
Left trough on the upper level, right on the lower level, two towing locomotives in front of it
Side view
Boat lift seen from the railway bridge
View over the eastern (upper) trough
Schachtschleuse Écluse of Fontinettes
Web links
literature
- Hans-Joachim Uhlemann: The history of the ship lifts . DSV-Verlag, Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-88412-291-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ L'ascenseur à bateaux des Fontinettes ( Memento des Originals of November 26, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French) from tourisme-saintomer.com, accessed on November 15, 2014
Coordinates: 50 ° 43 ′ 54 ″ N , 2 ° 18 ′ 12 ″ E