I'm not an expert in this area, though the efficiencies of canal systems have interested me greatly in recent years. What's interesting to me is that even today, few canal systems seem to have elevation gains of more than a few metres.
Among the greatest lifts I'm aware of are the Erie Canal (no longer commercially operated, though accessible by pleasure craft), which rises 174m (571 ft) above sea level. Canada's Trent-Severn Waterway origionates on Lake Ontario at 74m (243 ft) elevation. The Panama Canal rises only 26m (85 ft) to Lake Gatun. And the Suez Canal operates without locks.
Which makes the 1,200 m gain of Caminada's proposal all the more audacious. And ... perhaps ... impractical.
The C&O Canal (built as a competitor to the Erie Canal) has a 184m (605 ft) lift to get to Cumberland, which is where they gave up trying to reach the Ohio River, haven been beaten by their competitor, the B&O Railroad.
Per Wikipedia, their original planned route had another 2700 ft of total elevation change to make the Ohio River, about 4 times what they had already done.
Pennsylvania's answer to the Erie Canal was the Main Line of Public Works, which was a canal with the hard parts replaced with railroads. The Juniata Division alone was as big a lift as the C&O or Erie, and there was another canal of comparable lift to get down into Pittsburgh.
My guess is that this is more about practicality than anything. There's hardly a need for such high elevation locks I think, and where there is, tunneling is better.
There’s no violation of physics here, simply the energy transfer of potential energy from water moving downhill.
Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel, this seems like a remarkably efficient system, if almost certainly not economically viable to construct or maintain.
If we simplify a bit and assume that all tunnels are of the same size, with the volume of water needed to fill one tunnel plus the net displacement of the freight going up versus down, every barge in every tunnel is moved one tunnel forward on each slope, going up or down one side of the system. It’s interesting because there is automatic energy recovery “regenerative braking” because the displacement of the descending freight reduces the water consumption in proportion to the amount used to raise an equal amount of ascending freight. Pretty cool.
It would probably be more cost effective to use that same water source to build a hydroelectric powered electric locomotive, but -theoretically- the canal system should be able to move more freight.
In practice, i would bet on the railway, especially if descending trains fed energy back into the system to help power ascending ones. As for economics of construction and maintenance, the train would probably be orders of magnitude more cost effective.
Nonetheless, an elegant idea with an idyllic implementation. Kind of has a “clever” code smell though lol.
That thing is scary. If a boat on an uphill tunnel doesn't keep moving forward to keep up with the rising water, the boat is forced against the top of the tunnel and everybody drowns.
You can probably put a catenary with wheels on top of your boat and alongside to forward sides to ensure pushing it against the roof pushes your boat forward.
It's for freight, though, and if I understand it correctly, the force of the upward movement is automatically converted to horizontal movement by the pulley/rail system. So there's potentially no need for anyone to be on the boat as it transits the tunnel.
Not that that this looks practical - the tunnels would be huge, just for starters.
Is there a demonstration of the locks somewhere? From the patent it sounds like a tunnel that gets flooded which lifts the ship. The tunnel must be really large because it has to fit the ship at an angle and not just head on.
Personally glad they had the foresight not to do stupid things like this to beautiful natural environments...the only thing I find really sad about Europe is the lack of old growth forest.
dredmorbius|1 year ago
Among the greatest lifts I'm aware of are the Erie Canal (no longer commercially operated, though accessible by pleasure craft), which rises 174m (571 ft) above sea level. Canada's Trent-Severn Waterway origionates on Lake Ontario at 74m (243 ft) elevation. The Panama Canal rises only 26m (85 ft) to Lake Gatun. And the Suez Canal operates without locks.
Which makes the 1,200 m gain of Caminada's proposal all the more audacious. And ... perhaps ... impractical.
jcranmer|1 year ago
Per Wikipedia, their original planned route had another 2700 ft of total elevation change to make the Ohio River, about 4 times what they had already done.
Pennsylvania's answer to the Erie Canal was the Main Line of Public Works, which was a canal with the hard parts replaced with railroads. The Juniata Division alone was as big a lift as the C&O or Erie, and there was another canal of comparable lift to get down into Pittsburgh.
foota|1 year ago
jb69|1 year ago
Joe8Bit|1 year ago
0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pennine_Ring
cproctor|1 year ago
K0balt|1 year ago
Given a sufficient source of water above the highest tunnel, this seems like a remarkably efficient system, if almost certainly not economically viable to construct or maintain.
If we simplify a bit and assume that all tunnels are of the same size, with the volume of water needed to fill one tunnel plus the net displacement of the freight going up versus down, every barge in every tunnel is moved one tunnel forward on each slope, going up or down one side of the system. It’s interesting because there is automatic energy recovery “regenerative braking” because the displacement of the descending freight reduces the water consumption in proportion to the amount used to raise an equal amount of ascending freight. Pretty cool.
It would probably be more cost effective to use that same water source to build a hydroelectric powered electric locomotive, but -theoretically- the canal system should be able to move more freight.
In practice, i would bet on the railway, especially if descending trains fed energy back into the system to help power ascending ones. As for economics of construction and maintenance, the train would probably be orders of magnitude more cost effective.
Nonetheless, an elegant idea with an idyllic implementation. Kind of has a “clever” code smell though lol.
RajT88|1 year ago
I keep looking at this and coming back to this point. Where on earth can you get that volume of water that high up reliably year round?
Animats|1 year ago
nico_h|1 year ago
ajb|1 year ago
Not that that this looks practical - the tunnels would be huge, just for starters.
drewcoo|1 year ago
For the sake of the narrative?
nico_h|1 year ago
johnea|1 year ago
There are a couple of canal systems:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine-Main-Danube_Canal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canal_du_Midi
ano-ther|1 year ago
https://patents.google.com/patent/US955317A/en
Taniwha|1 year ago
AtlasBarfed|1 year ago
ur-whale|1 year ago
That particular project may have turned not to be economically viable, but it was at the very least thought of and studied seriously.
That kind of burning flame has now died miserably, and all Europe is now capable of doing is keeping the lights on.
metabagel|1 year ago
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/16/the-high-speed-rail...
bamboozled|1 year ago
LargoLasskhyfv|1 year ago
And thus would easily be matched or topped in capacity by anything rolling trough the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Base_Tunnel , faster.
kryptiskt|1 year ago
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link