The Dream of an Alpine Waterway
Pietro Caminada's ambitious 1907 project aimed to build a canal system over the Alps for cargo ships. Despite challenges, his legacy endures through a road named after him, showcasing his lasting impact.
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Pietro Caminada, a Swiss-Italian engineer, envisioned a groundbreaking project in 1907 to create a navigable waterway over the Alps for cargo ships without mechanical propulsion. His plan involved a 591-kilometer canal system with lock chambers that would allow ships to ascend and descend through natural buoyancy. Despite skepticism from some experts, Caminada received praise from influential figures like King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy. However, economic and social challenges in Italy led to the project's eventual abandonment. Caminada continued to believe in his transalpine shipping dream until his death in 1923. His legacy lives on through a country road named 'Via Pietro Caminada' between Rome and the Tyrrhenian Sea. Despite the project never coming to fruition, Caminada's innovative vision and determination left a lasting impact on the realm of transportation engineering.
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8 commentsAmong 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.
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.
For the sake of the narrative?
There are a couple of canal systems:
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.
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