On 8 December 2024, a motorised goods vessel was travelling uphill drove unbraked into the lower gate of the Müden lock. Both gates were torn from their anchoring and severely damaged. The solid construction on both sides of the lock chamber was also damaged.
Closure of the Müden lock and ship congestion
This meant that the Müden lock was out of order and 72 large motorised vessels were trapped in the upper water of the barrage, blocking the route to the Rhine. Navigation on the Moselle federal waterway came to a standstill. Initial estimates for repairs assumed that the lock would not reopen before the end of March 2025.
Sophisticated and technically creative solutions were developed within a very short space of time." (Eric Oehlmann, Head of the Directorate-General for Waterways and Shipping)
It was immediately clear that the "trapped" ships had to be sluiced down to the valley for economic reasons. This was ultimately achieved through painstaking "manual labour": individual dam beams, which can be used as makeshift locks, replaced the destroyed lock gate of the Müden lock and, after the beams had been inserted and removed over 1,000 times using a mobile crane, the last of the 72 vehicles were able to continue their journey on 27 December 2024 using an emergency lock.
The Moselle is one of the busiest tributary waterways of the Rhine and is of cross-border importance. It connects the economic regions of Lorraine, Luxembourg, Saar and Trier with the North Sea ports in the Netherlands and Belgium via the Rhine.
After emergency locks: Repair at record speed
The Mosel-Saar-Lahn Waterways and Shipping Office began repairs immediately after the emergency locks were opened. Two suitable gate wings already available at the Trier building yard were assembled as quickly as possible, prepared for installation and transported to the Müden lock. In the lock chamber, work had already begun on strengthening the damaged concrete and replacing the damaged turning columns - the hinges of the gate leaves - and sealing strips.
The task now must be to increase the efficiency and resilience of the infrastructure for inland navigation by accelerating the expansion of the Moselle locks." (Petra Berg, Saarland Minister responsible for mobility, among other things)
The new gate wings were finally installed on 24 January 2025. Several trial locks followed before the Müden lock was officially reopened to shipping traffic last Saturday, a full two months earlier than originally planned.
