Westphal raft

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The Westphal raft was a special transport system for transporting coal over the Dortmund-Ems Canal and the Mittelland Canal to Salzgitter . It was named after its developer, Dr.-Ing. Eberhard Westphal. It was built in 1943 at the Neudorf shipyard in Strasbourg.

construction

The Westphalfloß even load tubes flowed called, consisted of cylindrical transport containers of 3 meters wide and 24 meters long. Three containers were coupled next to one another and eight units one behind the other. The drive consisted of two tugs , one of which was towing and the other was pushing. The front had an output of two times 180 hp and the rear two times 150 hp. The formation was 222 meters long by 9 meters wide and had a loading capacity of 2,200 tons. The entire unit was steered by cables so that tight bends could be negotiated. The individual transport containers were pulled out of the water at the destination with an inclined elevator and tipped out on land. This saved the need for unloading with a crane . During the Second World War, such a power station in Salzgitter-Beddingen was supplied with coal. These rafts were, so to speak, the forerunners of pusher shipping . During this time, test drives with 120 transport containers were also undertaken on the Rhine .

As a further development, the so-called canal snake ran from 1961 . It also consisted of two motor units and eight transport containers measuring 9.0 × 24.0 meters. Total lifting capacity was 3,232 tons. This transport system was operated by the Wintrans shipping company under the name Wintrans 50 until the 1980s . The sailing area was between the Haus Aden colliery in the Datteln-Hamm Canal and Salzgitter-Beddingen . Since vehicles of this length were not allowed to drive in the DHK, the association in Datteln was divided into two halves. That means, first the two boats drove with four barges to Haus Aden for loading, then they went back to Datteln. There the four loaded barges were moored, the boats uncoupled and coupled to the four empty barges. With that you drove back to the shop and then you drove back to Datteln and coupled the eight barges to form a complete raft.

Predecessor in England

Around 1870, so-called articulated ships sailed on the rivers Aire and Calder. These were 6.1 m long and 4.8 m wide floating transport containers with a load capacity between 30 and 40 tons. 6 to 12 of these containers were articulated together and pushed by a screw steamer, a pointed bow section was attached to the front. The approximately 80 m long formation was steered into the river bends with ropes stretched along the left and right of the formation.

literature

  • Rolf Schönknecht / Armin Gewiese: On rivers and canals , The inland navigation of the world, Moers, Steiger 1988 ISBN 3-921564-98-0

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schönknecht / Gewiese: On rivers and canals, 1988, p. 105