Belgium Ronquières canal incline (#0196)

Looking down the tracks from the upper portion of the incline. I find it confounding to think of the level of public investment in creating such a structure. In the western US, our trains still mostly cross the mountains of the west on privately-owned right-of-ways that were originally built in the late 1800’s for the much slower pace of those days and have been only marginally modernized since; the canals that we do use are seem to be comparatively simple dam/lock combinations created in the 1950’s. Unless I’ve really missed something, we don’t have nearly the investment in infrastructure that’s illustrated by the incline. A second confounding factor was the investment in barge traffic. While we do still have significant barge traffic in parts of the U.S., we don’t seem to be nearly as reliant on this form of economically and probably environmentally more favorable form of transportation. Most startling, to me, about this structure was the level of public access. Given the very high level of security we have placed around similar such structures in the U.S. and the likelihood that someone photographing as I was would be stopped by a guard, I consistently felt that someone must be about ready to stop me from wandering around the various structures of the incline – but they weren’t. I assumed that I must have been watched while exploring, but I could find nothing to indicate that was actually happening. I was amazed at the ability to freely explore around the incline.

I came away from this questioning the U.S. reliance on free-market solutions, our comparatively primitive use of environmentally-beneficial technology, and our focus on security at a level that approaches paranoia.