What ever happened to water trains?

How did the chain get put on and off the boat?

This sounds like an aquatic version of a cable car

"...that many of you watching this may never have heard of...." Nope, I did not know these were a thing.

So we got regular trains, land trains and now water trains. Next step should then be air trains and fir.... space trains, right?

Many countries still use this system only perpendicular to the flow, as a means of crossing. Ie a Ferry.

Heard of this idea for river crossing, but never for river navigation. Well worth the watch

Just for future reference, Draught is actually pronounced draft. Just figured I should let you know, I'm not mad at you or anything.

Dear gods, can you imagine the noise that chain must have caused to someone inside the vessel?

“Someone is wrong on the Internet. I have to fix it…” The engineer in me groaned when you called an impeller a turbine. A turbine is driven, an impeller drives.

Finally, more BOAT content

We have one in Poland near my home town Kolno, it was the only one I’d ever seen in my life anywhere . It’s still there, to this day, and the farmers use it to transfer supplies across the river in the rainy seasons

My grandfather used the cables between the barges to grab on and swim upstream for some kilometers. The current would bring him back in half an hour. It was strictly forbidden. He told me much about those, and all said in the video is correct. The chain rests only on the riverbed and would have to be layed down far outside in corners, or it would get to shore on the inside of the riverbed after a few uses. BUT: Many of your pictures are misleading: The chains where extremly expensive, so only bigger streams with lots of things to move had these chains. And even as these ships only had little draught, they would not go on these little rivers in the video. They are too shallow and too windy. Also, the water jet system is only one of many, and only at the late models. It was big enough for getting the ship back downstream without the chain. Because if you get in oncoming traffic with only one chain, it would take hours to release the chain, pass, find and reattach the chain. Another reason they stopped the service was the diesel engine. The service stopped between the world wars, so much later than steam paddle ships. All the barges had captains and had to be steared, so giving them their own diesel motor and propeller was easy and would give them much more freedom (not waiting for a chain ship with free capacity for days or weeks). And the barges/boats went bigger, so even more efficent

As a marine engineer this was incredibly interesting. I thought I knew about almost all historic marine propulsion plants..... as always every day I learn something new. I think the biggest oh wow of this is the fact they had jet propulsion figured out way back when, just not quite the bucket. Be interesting to do a deeper dive into those thrusters,

We had this on the river Main in the Frankfurt Area. Long time ago. The chain is still on the ground. Thanks for the vid.

There’s a chain ferry quite near me actually, but going cross-stream. We get a lot of tall sail ships where I am and bridges would not be viable, so the chain ferry provides routine access from one side to the other.

they got replaced by pusher barges, some of them can consist of 10-12 units

The Badger operating out of Ludington Michigan is still steam powered and takes autos across Lake Michigan. We have ridden it many times. It was designed to haul freight cars across the lake. The City Of Milwaukee ship is a museum in Manistee Michigan. It also hauled rail cars across the lake. You can even stay overnight on the City Of Milwaukee or enjoy the haunted ship during Halloween.

I'm a third generation boilermaker, so I know some of my ancestors worked on these things. I'm just surprised I never heard of such a thing before! What a brilliant way to tackle a river! Thank you so much for creating this film, I'm almost 70 and never too old to learn!

i’d imagine it is hard to operate more than one boat in a river, as the chains are likely tangle in the waters

Another unique boat you should check out is the SS Badger. It ferries cars across Lake Michigan but was originally designed to ferry actual trains. At one point there was a fleet of them. Oh also it’s the last of its kind.