In Praise of Locks

Saturday, July 04, 2015
Moscow, Central Russia, Russian Federation
At last Carol has let me create my own entry on the blog as she's not interested in feats of engineering.

Locks are an interesting engineering design, especially when you are up close and have to use them .

This is what happens in Russia when your travel between the Gulf of Finland and the Caspian Sea or Black Sea.

The Vikings discovered routes between the far north and Constantinople in the south, which became major trading routes back in 12th century. The Viking explorers had to carry their boats over-ground to get to other rivers and lakes in order to make the journey.

With the advent of canals and dams, Russia created internal waterways that moved river traffic between the far north of the country to the south.

But it's when you get up and close to them that you can learn how they operate and what engineering principles they employ to enable ships, barges and boats to pass through regions of the country.

I've been up close to locks on canals and rivers in the UK and they are cute and effective. The canal boats are long and thin . The gates on the locks are frequently manually operated, which is a lot of fun.

Then there’s the canal system in Russia. 

The locks were originally designed to be 210 m long, 17.6 m wide and 4.2 m deep (1m = 1yd). What they don’t tell you is how high they can go. I can because I read the guide. Up to a whopping 16.25m! 

And there are 18 of them between St Petersburg and Moscow. 

But the greatest thrill was seeing how our captain and crew glided the ship (only 120m X 17m wide) into and out of the locks. What an experience.

  Our ship was about 14m in height, so when we entered a lock we often couldn’t see above it until the gates were closed and the water flowed in.

Once we were raised to the level of the next body of water, the gate(s) were opened / submerged and we passed through to the next one .

When we departed St. Petersburg and cruised up the Neva river to Lake Ladoga (Russia’s largest lake – freezes over in the winter), everyone on board went outside to see our first lock passage. I guess we all thought this was the real start of the river cruise, although we had been cruising for 4 hours.

The gates were a classic design and we had all of 0.7m in width to spare when the ship was tied up to one side of this first lock.

We only found out later that the larger cargo ships carrying either timber or fuel take the route from Lake Ladoga to the White Sea in the far north of Russia.  

So along the Svir River the 2 locks are only wide enough to take a 17m wide ship. Even then we shared our lock with a second ship huddled in front of us with so little room to move. 

Most of the new locks are wider –23m—and have a single solid gate that lowers down on the high side of the lock, while there are 2 gates on the lower side .

After passing though 8 locks and always going up, it was strange to then enter a lock and look down at a body of water below the gate. On this trip it only occurred twice.

When we reached Moscow, we all thought that we'd finished seeing locks, but we were wrong.

There right beside one of the canals were metal trees covered with hundreds of locks!

The Russians have created an artistic way of controlling —not waterways —but all those newlyweds who want to leaving their message of undying love by lock.  

Comments

Wendy Moyles
2015-07-18

Well, Rick, good to see that the cruise is keeping you full of facts about locks! Seriously this is a good advert for a potential passenger who doesn't want just to sit but also to learn too. I can imagine Jim loving this!

Julianne
2015-07-19

I'm fascinated to hear about those locks, having experienced only the Panama Canal and a couple of locks in the UK. Such clever engineering! Also I noted with interest the love locks, which look so pretty. South of Sydney near Coledale, love locks are accumulating along the Sea Cliff Bridge. In Paris I believe love locks are being removed from bridges over the Seine. I reckon the love locks look better on trees than bridges.

2025-02-12

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