Hainaut

The neo-Gothic station building of Binche today forms the impressive terminus of a railway line that once continued all the way to the border station of Erquelinnes.

Did industrialist Évence-Narcisse Coppée II restart his coke factory in 1915 to supply benzol to the German occupier? That question was at the heart of a lawsuit against Coppée in which his coke factory played the leading role.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, electric power experienced its breakthrough. During the Brussels World Exhibition of 1910 and the Ghent World Exhibition of 1913, electric lighting left visitors in awe. Electricity also played a starring role at the Universal Exhibition of Charleroi.

A 49-meter-long bridge over the River Scheldt, dating back to 1959, was the first railway bridge in Belgium to utilise the technique of prestressed concrete.

For over a century, a graceful concrete bridge has stood above the railway tracks near Mouscron station in Belgium

A cooling tower rests next to steel company Carsid's mothballed power plant.

Flemish workers flocked to Mouscron during the interwar to work in textile factories. The city, therefore, had to pull out all the stops to cope with the growing population.

Today, no trains run along the former railway line 109 between Mons and Chimay, but historic steam locomotives and diesel and electric railways of the local railways in Belgium do.

You can still find a monumental remnant of a nineteenth-century lime kiln complex along the Scheldt.

After over half a century, a double staircase climbing up the railway embankment is the only reminder of the vanished Tertre Charbonnage train station.