FILENAMES: Montech01.JPG Montech02.JPG Montech03.JPG Montech04.JPG DESCRIPTION: These are pictures of a very unusual locomotive. Posted by Peter Short . The following description was provided: ================================================================= See attached images, Montech 1-4 One of the most unusual locomotives I have seen was the Pente d'eau at Montech near Montauban in France. I saw it working a couple of times, quite a sight. Is it a locomotive? Well it runs on concrete tracks... There is a famous canal in France that first joined the Atlantic ocean to the Mediterranean Sea - the Canal du Midi, finished in 1681. This canal goes from Sete in the Med. to Toulouse, whereafter you followed the Garonne river to the Atlantic. Later another canal, Canal lateral a la Garonne, ie a canal beside the river Garonne was built. On this later canal there is a series of 5 locks at Montech. In the 1970's there was an effort to modernise the canal, one proposal was to bypass the 5 locks at Montech with a Pente d'eau (ie a water slope). They built a concrete channel which starts at the level of the lowest lock and slopes upwards to the level of the highest lock. The horizontal lentgh of the slope is 443 metres, height difference is 13.3 metres, a slope gradient of 3%. Either side of this sloping channel is a very large locomotive, each powered by 1000hp diesel electric. Each loco has 8 large rubber tyres, plus horizontal wheels that press against a central concrete 'rib' - this keeps each loco 'on track'. Consider a case where a boat wishes to go 'up hill'. The boat comes into the bottom end of the channel, after passing the two locomotives it stops and a huge blade (like an oversized bulldozer blade) is lowerered into the water channel behind the boat. This blade is connected to the two locomotives and is a close fit in the channel, in fact it has rubber edge seals. With the blade now down, the locos' start pushing, they push all the captured water, including the boat, up the sloping channel. The blade doesn't push the boat, just the water it is floating in. They reach the top, blade lifts, boat motors out. All very interesting, I saw it operating at a couple of weekends where sight- seeing boat went down thought the five locks and returned via the 'water slope'. This was built in the early 1970's, I saw it operating around 1996, I think there may be one other in France and they may have tried one in China (going from hazy memory). BTW, each of the locks also had a little hydro electric power plant alonside making use of the head of water, this is a fairly common sight in France, small un-manned hydro plants. The canal itself is beautiful, lined with trees on each side, nowadays many tourist types using the canal.