How do barges lock through

This conversation happened at lunch that I didn’t have an answer for. How do large barges lock through? I have live on, or near the Mississippi all my life but have never watched a barge large enough that had to be broken into segments lock through. How do they move the first segment out of the lock so the second one can come in?

from what I’ve seen(usually while waiting to lock thru myself) they divide the barges up, push whatever fits,( tying the rest up of course), through the lock, tie those up, motor vessel locks back through, gets the rest or the next segment, same thing again, until everything is where they want it, hook em all back together and away they go. it’s quite a process, now I stick to one pool at at time, altough you can call or cb the lock to see what they have scheduled.

Pool2fool is correct, it’s really something to watch. Provided you have a full cooler and nothing in particular to do!

Thanks guys, thought they used some kind of vehicle on the wall to pull the first segment out of the chamber. When the tow backs out of the lock does he back all the way past the segment tied off or does he spin around and circle back?

Actually the first section of barges is electrically winched out of the lock chamber and is tied to the seawall outside the lock until the balance of the barges and tug is locked through. then they recable the whole works and procede to the next lock and dam to repeat the entire process. A difficult lock can take up to three hours from the time they approach until clear of the lock and only then are pleasure boats again allowed to use the system.

My wife and I waited 2 1/2 hours from start to finish just the other day.By the time they locked thru then let the boats above thru and then we got thru the was almost 3 hours…