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Wiener Neustadt Kanal


Pluto

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The Wiener Neustadt Kanal is a narrow canal running around 35 miles from Vienna built circa 1800 based on the narrow canals of England. A fiend in Austria has just had a book published on the canal's history, and this is a link to a video of photos of the canal, 

 

I appear briefly at 3.18 mins. I am currently translating the book on canal building written by this canal's engineer in 1817, in which he describes several previously unrecorded features on English narrow canals.

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1 hour ago, bizzard said:

I drive trains between Wiener Neustadt and St Anton, on my simulator that is., and theire looks like a river or canal running alongside in the valley's for most of the way, can't see any locks though.

You need to get a simulator for the Vienna suburban S7 which uses the line of the canal in the city centre. Are 'your' trains working over the Semmering Railway? The canal was originally expected to follow this route as it made its way towards Trieste, but only the section from Vienna to Wiener Neustadt was built.The Aspangbahn also follows the canal's route in the Vienna area.

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1 hour ago, Pluto said:

You need to get a simulator for the Vienna suburban S7 which uses the line of the canal in the city centre. Are 'your' trains working over the Semmering Railway? The canal was originally expected to follow this route as it made its way towards Trieste, but only the section from Vienna to Wiener Neustadt was built.The Aspangbahn also follows the canal's route in the Vienna area.

I got t wrong. It was Innsbruck St Anton. I have the ProTrain Semmering.  I 'll check out Vienna surburban S7,  thanks.

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Thanks for posting the video Pluto - will the translated book be available to purchase?

I've never tried ProTrain (I've been building routes in Trainz for years though) but one of the developers of Zusi hires from us occasionally. From having seen RW's rendition of Hillmorton and also my boatyard in their Trent Valley route then I don't think accurate canal modelling is high up on their agenda.

 

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14 hours ago, Rose Narrowboats said:

Thanks for posting the video Pluto - will the translated book be available to purchase?

I am publishing the book through the RCHS, who will be arranging sales. It won't be a best seller, but very useful for those with an interest in canal history. Not only does he describe how narrow boats were built, and in Vienna I have found the drawings the author did of Coventry Canal boats in 1795, but also has information on all aspects of canal building. It is a much more technical book than the long article in Rees Cyclopedia, and has 126 drawings, as well as the 20 odd ones I found in the archive in Vienna. Although you don't think of Austria in regard to canals, they did have a couple, and grand designs for a national network were drawn up in 1786 to link Vienna with the recent additions of Poland and lands in northern Italy to the Empire.

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Vienna to Trieste sounds to me like a pretty ambitious route for a canal, though I suppose there would have been strong demand for it at that time.

Wouldn't it have needed a lot of locks and/or a seriously long tunnel to get over the mountains? How high above sea level did the planned route go?

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The overall rise would have been 1600 metres to cross seven summit levels, so probably over 800 locks, and two major tunnels were required, one 30km in length. This was for a scheme of circa 1820. An earlier one, of 1786, would have connected all the main lands in the Austrian Empire, including a branch into Italy via the ski resort of Bolzano. I am hoping to produce maps of the different schemes as part of the introduction to my translation.

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On ‎14‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 16:20, Pluto said:

The overall rise would have been 1600 metres to cross seven summit levels, so probably over 800 locks, and two major tunnels were required, one 30km in length. This was for a scheme of circa 1820. An earlier one, of 1786, would have connected all the main lands in the Austrian Empire, including a branch into Italy via the ski resort of Bolzano. I am hoping to produce maps of the different schemes as part of the introduction to my translation.

That is one very ambitious sounding project, far bigger for example than the Leeds-Liverpool, which met a pressing commercial need and was still very difficult to build.

Does history record, when the engineers were seeking the money to build it, how long it took the Dragons of the day to stop laughing?

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1 hour ago, Ray T said:

Would the circular indent be for a "Brindley Gate?"

Brindley Gate.JPG

This shows the upper end of a lock where there was a single gate. Double gates were only used at the lower end. The curved mark is purely from the water flow, though the book written by the engineer for the canal does give full details, including drawings, for the design and construction of automatic stop gates.

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I noticed among the photos a model of one of their boats described as 22m x 2m, which if accurate would be slightly narrower and longer than ours. Brighton at 71' 6" only just fits in some locks, I'm thinking particularly of one of the Farmers Bridge flight, and 22m would be a smidge over 72' 2". Anyway, it wouldn't matter so long as their locks were built to a standard matching their boats and vice-versa.

Also, none of their boats seem to have had cabins, maybe the crews always stayed in houses overnight.

The part they built is evidently derelict with just waterfalls where the locks were, do they aspire to restore it?

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22 minutes ago, Peter X said:

That is one very ambitious sounding project, far bigger for example than the Leeds-Liverpool, which met a pressing commercial need and was still very difficult to build.

Does history record, when the engineers were seeking the money to build it, how long it took the Dragons of the day to stop laughing?

Your 'Dragons' were the government, who were struggling to cope with the recent expansion of Austria's borders. Canals were seen as the best and most efficient way of moving troops, so an extensive system was not regarded in the same way as canals in this country, where they were built by private enterprise. Many canals in the 18th and 19th century on the European mainland were built because of military requirements, such as the Bromberg Canal in what is now Poland, and the Canal de l'Est in France. Major projects were held back more by the problems in construction, as the technology for civil engineering was still in its infancy. Because of the needs of large military projects, the scientific approach in Europe to civil engineering was far in advance of what happened in England. Here, the smaller scale of construction necessary could easily be overcome by the knowledge of local craftsmen. Technical education in England only dates from the mid-19th century, over a century after it had been established in France, The Netherlands, Prussia, Saxony, Austria, Russia and Scandinavia. Scotland's eduction system was also much in advance of England's. The Industrial Revolution relied almost entirely upon the skill of local craftsmen. By the mid-19th century, technology was reliant on more advanced mathematics, such as calculus, which our education system would be poor at encompassing, with the result that our industrial domination declined. As far as I can see, our education system still manages to avoid training suitable for those involved with practical skills.

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Interesting. Ours had some military uses too, for example the Weedon depot and the use of the Wey & Arun during the Napoleonic Wars, but yes I'm sure the prime motive for canal building in the UK was for transport of goods to support the Industrial Revolution. I've no idea how much knowledge of calculus the likes of Brindley and Brunel had or needed, but conversely I learned it doing A levels and a degree in maths then never much used it because I went into a career in IT but specialising in commercial applications. I did write one or two programs involving square roots because they're used in stock control algorithms.

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1 hour ago, Peter X said:

Interesting. Ours had some military uses too, for example the Weedon depot and the use of the Wey & Arun during the Napoleonic Wars, but yes I'm sure the prime motive for canal building in the UK was for transport of goods to support the Industrial Revolution. I've no idea how much knowledge of calculus the likes of Brindley and Brunel had or needed, but conversely I learned it doing A levels and a degree in maths then never much used it because I went into a career in IT but specialising in commercial applications. I did write one or two programs involving square roots because they're used in stock control algorithms.

Military use was not the main reason behind UK canals, apart from the Royal Military and, perhaps, the Caledonian. The Wey & Arun had some military backing, and look how successful it was. There was some military interest in using canals, particularly to carry troops destined for Ireland, but very little actually happened.

Calculus was only used for civil engineering from the mid-19th century in England. Brunel might have known something of it, but Brindley would have known nothing. The idea was developed, amongst others, by Euler working in Berlin and St Petersburg, and taken up by French mathematicians towards the end of the 18th century, but it was not really used for engineering until the start of the 19th century, and then only in France and some of the Germanic countries.

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