Polhems sluss i Trollhättan - Västra Götalands Län, Sweden - Photos Then and Now on Waymarking.com

Around 1740, Christian Polhem was commissioned to enable shipping on the Götaälv river to Lake Vänern. The plans he drew up included several locks near Lilla Edet and Trollhättan. In Trollhättan, three locks were supposed to bypass the approximately 30m high waterfall. The construction of the middle lock began in 1747, in which a height difference of almost 15.4m was to be overcome.

Unfortunately, for a 16m wooden gate, the water pressure at the bottom is too high for the gates to last long. The rock also proved to be too hard for proper and rapid mining, so that only narrow ships could have passed through the locks. The work was therefore stopped in 1753 - two years after Polhem's death.

The 16m long and almost 6m wide arched bridge over the lock was built in 1889, and after 1938 the lock was dammed for the Hojum water power plant.

The older picture was taken by L. Albert sometime between 1920 and 1938 from the small pedestrian bridge.

References:
- Polhems slussled, Swedish Wikipedia
- Hojums kraftverk, Swedish Wikipedia
- Polhems sluss i Trollhättan. The original picture is in the hands of the "Tekniska museets arkiv", the digital copy was released into the Public Domain in 2016.

Year photo was taken: 1920 - 1938

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