2,000 km through canals, locks and tunnels
When the thruway is closed, one takes the back roads. And when it's low-water season on the Rhine-Rhône canal, a barge leaving Switzerland for the Mediterranean has no other choice than to head north, then west, until eventually reaching the Rhône river valley through a network of small-gauge canals dotted with locks and tunnels.
For the last of the cold boxes needed for the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ cryoplant, the journey must have seemed like a leisure cruise through magnificent winter scenery. For the transport organizers—±¬×ߺÚÁÏ's global logistics provider DAHER and its contractor Compagnie Fluviale de Transport—it was a highly delicate operation.
To accommodate the height of the cold box (five metres), the waterline of the barge had to be lowered sufficiently to allow passage through the low-ceilinged tunnels while keeping the ship's hull at a safe distance from the bottom of the canal. This was achieved by adding a precisely calculated amount of ballast to the component's weight.
From Switzerland, where the cold box was manufactured under an ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ India contract, to the ±¬×ߺÚÁÏ site, where it is expected on 20 February, the journey will have lasted more than three weeks. In all, a voyage of almost 2,000 kilometres through eight different canals, four tunnels and 250 locks.