The old wagon was unfortunately so fragile that archaeologists were not able to recover it whole. The walls were not stable enough to remain intact: when it was dug up, the wagon overturned and completely disintegrated.
The metal furniture container car with a capacity of 8,960 pounds (4 tons) was buried in the embankment and was only identifiable by its painted inscriptions such as “FURNITURE REMOVAL TO HOUSE”, “Enquire at any station”, “BK 769” of which the B indicates the size class of the wagon, the K that it was used to transport the furniture and goods of people who were moving and “LNER”. Designed to be loaded onto trucks or flat wagons to transport furniture from house to house, this is the only known example of a red oxide LNER moving container, as all others were blue .
A Napoleonic era cannon recovered
A 36-pound cannon from the end of the 18th century, used by the French army under the command of Napoleon, bearing the symbol of an anchor, represented on the standard models of the French military fleet, was also recovered in the Scheldt during dredging work as part of the same connection project.
The discovery took place during the dredging work on the Scheldt between the Sint-Annabos on the Linkeroever (left bank) and the “Oosterweel”, a former polder village, on the Rechteroever (right bank). In preparation for the construction of the new Scheldt tunnel, the shipping channel is temporarily relocated, requiring the removal of a large amount of silt.
Brussels metro cars sent to the scrapyard: “The decommissioned trains had been immobilized for a long time” (PHOTO)
Napoleon had a great influence on the port and the city of Antwerp, to which he attached great strategic importance. It was he who sowed the seeds of Antwerp’s rebirth as a commercial metropolis with a world port, but in practice Napoleon’s ambitious plans were not so much commercial, but rather served military objectives. He assiduously built a military fleet that aimed to break the continental blockade by which the British navy held continental Europe in its grip.
The barrel will now be carefully cleaned and studied. It can then be exhibited, after restoration.
The mystery of the Lion Mound of Waterloo evoked the presence of damaged cannons to support the building, landslides which occurred in 1995 and 1999 undermined this legend. On the other hand, the embankments of the Brussels North station would be well reinforced by the buried presence of various irreparable steam locomotives, used to solidify the railway platforms.
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