Various Kinds of Barges for Shipping Uses
Basically, any kind of vessel with the primary purpose of shipping any type of cargo is called a barge. These are not like boats or the independent vessels you initially had in mind. Instead, they are the floating kind that you usually see being tugged or towed alongside a handful of other vessels.
In terms of appearance, a barge can be compared to a raft with its flat-shaped bottom. It was designed this way in order to ensure that its capacity to carry cargo is optimized; even huge and bulky cargo can be easily transferred and hauled.
Barges have been around for quite some time in the modern era, just a bit ahead of the Industrial Revolution. Before Europe’s Industrial Revolution, the main way of transporting ferry cargoes across great distances connected by bodies of water were marine barges. After the Industrial Revolution, alongside the invention of the convenient steam engine and the subsequent trains, barges as a means of cargo transportation began to plummet due to speed factors.
Barges
Different barge types to look into for your working steel barge:
• Car-float Barges: commonly used in the early 20th century as a means to ferry rail carts, the car-float barges were indeed useful. Basically, these barges are described as rail-carts linked to barges so they were considered portable and were ferried from point A to point B. Today. The car-float barges can still be seen in great use in some locations in the United States of America.
• Dry Bulk Cargo Barges: barges of these designs, as stated in the name, are mainly used to transfer or haul dry cargo. When talking about dry cargo, it can be anything from coal to sand, food grains, minerals like steel to other dry commodities legally allowed in barge transfers.
• Barge Carrying Liquid Cargo: as the name states, this is the exact opposite of the dry bulk cargo barges. Barge carrying liquid cargo was designed to carry fertilizers and petrochemicals generally in its liquid state as well as other essential industrial liquid chemicals.
• Barracks Barge: also known as a houseboat, the barracks barges are a common sight in places like Canada, Cambodia, Australia, Laos, and North India. The name is quite self-explanatory since these types of barges have residential purposes and are aesthetic as they float on standby in lakes and rivers.
• Royal Barges: basically, these barges are used for certain occasions and act as a platform for various royal functions and celebrations. Royal barges are still in operations especially in nations with monarchies like the United Kingdom.
• Split Hopper Barge: an incredibly unique barge mainly for the haul and ferry of dredged items since they fitted with appropriated unloading tools. Extensively used in operations like marine construction, the split hopper barge is able to unload all sorts of materials like sand, dredged items, and soil at the exact site. Some split hopper barges are self-propelled featuring hydraulic cylinders and motors; these hydraulic parts split the hull open.
• Power Barge: simply put, these are movable power plants.
Get more info about working steel barge here.
