Massive Canals

With a capacity of over 200 million tons of cargo per year the Panama Canal is already the biggest canal in the America's. Now a new 5 billion dollar expansion project is set to double its capacity, giving a new lease of life to this vital transport artery. The canal will soon allow ships over a third of a kilometer long to make the journey between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in just 8 hours. This 80 kilometer long behemoth is built on the engineering foundations of a series of landmark canals. In this series we explore the innovations in technology and construction that have helped modern engineers build the record-breaking Panama Canal. Using stunning CGI animation, this film reveals the incredible stories behind these canals and the innovations that have enabled them to grow in size. Four ingenious leaps forward that enabled canals to evolve …from BIG to BIGGER into the America's BIGGEST."

In the first leap of technology — Climbing Hills — we investigate the construction of the Briare Canal in France. Commissioned by King Henri IV in the early 17th Century the Briare Canal was planned to link the River Loire with the River Seine, allowing wine and other goods to be transported directly into the heart of Paris. But engineers faced a seemingly insurmountable problem, a 45 meter high hill blocking the canals path. We reveal how engineers split the canal into a series of flat pools and worked out how to lift cargo-laden barges safely up and down each section. Today in Central America, the builders of the Panama Canal need to work out how to use a similar system to lift ships thousands of times larger than those at Briare 26 meters up in to the heart of Panama.

In the second leap we investigate the use, and saving, of Water in canal construction. At the Bridgewater Canal engineer James Brindley was planning a canal in an area with no easy access to water with which to keep it topped up. We explore how he avoided the need for water hungry locks by creating his canal on a flat route and building an ambitious stone aqueduct to cross a deep river valley. We reveal how the aqueduct was replaced 100 years later by a unique piece of engineering, an iron aqueduct capable of swinging out of the way of ships passing in the river below. Engineers at the Panama Canal came up with a grand scheme to avoid locks in the mountainous area of central Panama. We show how a novel design will save water at the new expanded Panama Canal locks.

In the third leap of technology we reveal how canal engineers solve the problem of Excavation. Faced with the prospect of digging out vast quantities of earth and rock during construction of the Manchester Ship Canal, Edward Leader Williams, called on a battalion of steam-powered excavators. Today the Panama Canal has called in the help of a machine capable of pulverizing hard volcanic rock 15 meters underwater.

Finally we see how technology allows the safe Navigation of over 14,000 ships a year through the Panama Canal. The canal is vital to Panama's economy so any delay to shipping must be avoided. A control center tracks traffic and directs powerful tugboats to assist in accidents. In a multi million dollar simulator, pilots are trained to deal with any situation that might occur at the new expanded canal.

Featuring interviews with the people at the heart of the Panama Canals operation and following them as they work we take the viewer on a unique journey through history to explore one of the world's most crucial canals.

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