Water towers

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.

A water tower in the Walloon Brabant village of Virginal-Samme still recalls the architecture of the 1940s.

Melle, near Ghent, was once the walhalla for flower and ornamental cultivation. Greenhouses, florist houses and horticultural businesses flanked the roads.

In a remote corner of the Maritime Station, a former freight station in Brussels, a water tower in the Art Nouveau style was built to refuel steam locomotives with water.

The Ypres water tower has dominated the landscape for almost a hundred years. It dates from the period of reconstruction after the devastating First World War.

In the early twentieth century, a water tower was erected near the Treignes border station to supply the steam locomotives running between Charleroi and the French border.

Mariembourg station, today the terminus of railway line 132 between Charleroi and the Belgian-French border, has a spacious water tower in store.

The ten-kilometre-long railway line 102 cut through the Borinage and connected several coal mines between Saint-Ghislain and Frameries.

A Monnoyer-type water tower stands in the shadow of the headframe and compressor building of the Helchteren-Zolder mine.