Boat Lifts on the Canal du Centre 1.93

The lifts on the Canal du Centre are a series of four hydraulic boat lifts near the town of La Louvière in Belgium which are classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. All four are located on the Canal du Centre in Belgium's historic sillon industriel industrial belt.History and current statusAlong a particular 7km stretch of the Canal du Centre, which connects the river basins of the Meuse and the Scheldt, the water level rises by. To overcome this difference, the lift at Houdeng-Goegnies was opened in 1888. The other three lifts, each with a rise, opened in 1917.The elevators are double, consisting of two vertically mobile tanks or caissons, each supported in the centre by an iron column. The two columns are hydraulically linked in such a way that one caisson rises as the other descends, the weight of one counterbalancing the weight of the other.These lifts were designed by Edwin Clark from the British company Clark, Stansfield & Clark. The lifts were part of the inspiration behind the Peterborough and Kirkfield Lift Locks in Canada. In the late 19th century Richard Birdsall Rogers visited the locks as to understand and study possible ideas for a lift lock system.