A walk around the Trollhätte falls and locks

For centuries, Trollhätte has been a difficult point for transport from the coast to and from inland Sweden. The river (Göta Älv) comes down at this point over a 32m waterfall. In 1795, work was started on a series of stepped locks to enable ships to reach Lake Vänern, the biggest lake in Sweden and - after the two big Russian lakes, which are more like seas - the third biggest lake in Europe.
Clearly, ships have been getting bigger all the time and so has technology to build locks into rock and thus new locks were constructed in 1844 and again in 1916, the current locks. These three sets of locks are now still clearly visible next to one another.
The 1800 locks:

The 1844 locks:

And two pictures of the 1916 locks in operation:


This shows the yacht rising 8 m. There are 4 lock chambers, making for a total of 32m.
The waterfall which is bypassed by the locks is no longer there. It is now diverted into Sweden's two oldest hydro power stations. But sometimes, the falls are 'switched on' for the tourists. In June this happens on Saturdays at 3pm (and not on Sundays as one of our books suggested). So we missed it and only saw the dry bed:

In July, the falls operate daily (it appears many things in Sweden happen in July only).
All in all, it was a very interesting afternoon!