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They were operated by Peter Froud for many years. I think the first photo is mid to late 1960s. The second is 1972 when I worked on Mabel in Dutton Dock with Tim Leech.

Nice one good sir. You went into a lot more detail than I'd be able to. I'd actually forgotten about the AWS magnets prior to speed restrictions as well. One thing to perhaps mention for anyone still thinking the job is easy. The route knowledge of the driver means all we mention makes no difference to the driver. He could be approaching in thick thick fog, seeing nothing. But he or she knows where every single speed restriction is. Remember, back in the day, trains didnt have headlights!!

These are from the opening of the Stratford Canal in July 1964 (60 years ago)

On a leisure mooring you have no right of tenure at all. Best to find another mooring rather than get involved in a very expensive legal battle that you have no chance of winning.

^^^ a more positive comment about Manchester 👍 the OP only needs 55’ of space so should be ok, but if there’s no room below, going up the 9 locks to find space at Piccadilly wouldn’t be too much hardship, however, for peace of mind the suggestion to use a boat club is well worth considering, either way HenryFreeman, while you’re there do the Rochdale 9 for the hell of it and see what the fuss is about, it’s great taking a boat through a city and this one’s a unique experience,

I doubt it. Most lottery funded arty stuff - galleries, museums etc, closes after a few years because the lottery only funds initial capital, not running, costs. I don't think the lottery gets its money back and hands it back to the punters. Businesses hive bits off and dump them all the time without penalty - that's how hedge funds work. The restoration bodies were, I presume, funded by donations and volunteers. Even if they still exist in some form, they wouldn't be due anything back - CRT would just say they've spent the equivalent in maintenance over the years. Or, of course, they could just hand the canal back to the restoration body and tell them to get on with it, like the steam railway buffs. Of course, CRT would charge them for the water...

Its a Beta, check the multiplugs on the engine wiring loom for bad contacts.

Trains don’t have automatic brakes. Stopping a body with huge momentum and very little friction between the wheels and what they are rolling on is arguably the most difficult aspect and one that’s very much more difficult than stopping a car. Learning and retaining route knowledge is a key factor as is the behavioural response to adverse signal indications. A sizeable proportion of people actually don’t have the necessary cognitive and behavioural skills required for the job. You don’t properly understand what you’re saying.

I would suggest that the facetiousness began with a comment along the lines of,"....I could still drive a train though, cushy job that. Not colour blind, can sit down all day, short working hours, like to be alone, not dealing with the general public, pension, uniform, free travel, no physical exertion, overpaid, no outside working, piece of cake....". Here we have the result of someone else who thought the same way (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/train-chaos-result-of-manager-stepping-in-to-cover-striking-drivers-union-says/ar-AA1ld7Ph), they have to instruct train drivers for a reason you know, it's not as simple as it looks. Flying an airliner also looks easy after all how many kids have played 'Flight Simulator' on their computers. It's easy innit, full throttle down the runway, pull back the joystick, engage autopilot and job's a good 'un, isn't that how it works? Why do they pay them £100,000 per year? anyone could do it.......couldn't they?

Bought myself this can recently online unseen. Very happy with the price I paid for it. It was advertised as being about fifty years old, but other than that the seller didn't really seem to know what it was, where it came from etc... What are people's thoughts? I know Taylor Brothers was a business on Trafford Park by the Bridgewater Canal, but don't know why they'd have a can painted. There's also Taylors boatyard in Chester, but I'm not sure they were ever known as Taylor Bros? Could be just a couple of brothers with the surname Taylor that decided to get a can painted I suppose.

The situation MAY be different IF he is on a proper RESIDENTIAL mooring but its always tricky because losing that mooring does not make him homeless, he can move and live on the boat anywhere else.

You seem to be more aware than many so called engineers, I think you will do a better job yourself. Certainly you can do better than an RCR fitter with no time or inclination to do a proper job. You could get the real expert in, Chris Jones, Beta engineer and installer, 07887 565531. Alsager based I think unless he has moved, I haven't seen him for a while. He will be more thorough than a non affiliated fitter and has all the spares to hand.

A train driver has to do more than drive the train. He has responsibility for millions of £s worth of equipment and for the management of upto 1000?? people, some of which will have heart attacks, be drunk, be off their heads, and deal with them when the automatic systems fail. Try driving a (automatic) tube train late evening during the Notting Hill carnival. And then there's the shift system with the 05:30 am starts. But that said, I think a part of everybody's salary should be proportional to the successful consistent delivery of their jobs so that strikes cost employes more and can't be considered as just unpaid extra holiday on convenient days.

You were brave filling up with water just outside the "hairpins". 🙂 Any time we have been there there has been a hose fixed to the tap and lying on the dirty ground. As we couldn't get that hose off we didn't take on water there. We have had no problems mooring in the hairpins and although there are usually a couple of what look like permanent boats there the rest were visitors. Nice quiet mooring unlike through the first lock of the nine where there is an almost constant footfall and there is not much distance between your boat and the wall. Ok for a night though. It used to be good when you could moor round past the pub though.

I assume you need to control solar charging too (when you go LFP), also inverter/charger -- and do you have a generator? At some point, rather than trying to get disparate gear to all work together and argue about who's boss, it becomes easier to have a centralised controller like a Cerbo (or RPi for cheap DIY, but you have to then support it) to tie everything together and make it all work nicely, where the battery BMS controls SoC and the controller makes everything else do its bidding and gives you control over everything via a single unified interface-- whether this is an LCD display or a phone/PC/tablet app. This can also mean you're not constrained to be CANbus-only, most controllers (and software) also support Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi, which makes it a lot easier to add new equipment -- for example batteries with inbuilt BMS only accessible via Bluetooth, or Ruuvi sensors for monitoring temperature/humidity.

it could be that the shrubs and trees are hiding the cabin when in full leaf ? This was late October 2023 when the leaves were coming off abd shrubs just coming to the end of seasonal growth

Unlikely, I feel.

"Landslips of similar proportions to the one in the Brinklow Cutting have been commonplace, to my personal knowledge, for at least the last 60 years. Less so the further back in time you go, . . mainly because the trees were smaller back then, and so applied less rotating/slipping force to the areas of the cutting sides around the roots. C&RT, and their equally clueless contractors, are making their expected customary long drawn out song and dance, and some very serious mistakes, over getting the canal open to boat traffic again following this relatively minor, and if you know how, comparatively easy to deal with landslip. In the days when the North Oxford still saw regular commercial traffic, . . and was maintained and run by British Waterways, an organisation a bit more akin to a real navigation authority than the clowns in charge these days, . . a slip such as the present one in Brinklow Cutting would generally delay traffic for no more than around half a day at most. There's a right way and a wrong way to deal with slips like this present one in the Brinklow Cutting. A lot of useful lessons in doing it the right way were learned from mistakes made with the Saddington Slip many years earlier, . . which, going from what I recall being told, from the early 1960's through to the early 1970's, by other working and ex-boatmen, BWB lengthsmen, other British Waterways company men, the two BWB Section/Length Foremen, and BWB's Leicester Section Inspector, Matt Mortimer, . . first began causing really serious recurring problems in the late 1930's or early 1940's. Removing too much slip material/spoil from the navigation channel at the site of a landslip too soon after the slip, combined with also removing the main trunks and root systems from where they all finish up immediately after a slip, is a really big mistake, . . and almost invariably leads to immediate, and usually continuous, further slippage and movement. The weight/mass of the main parts of the fallen trees must, initially, be repositioned only as much as necessary, ie. only what is needed in order to open up a navigation channel past the slip site of minimal width and depth. Leaving as much as possible of the slip material/spoil, . . plus most of the weight/bulk of the fallen trees, all in situ at first has the effect of allowing the slip to stabilize itself to the greatest possible extent, . . whilst navigation resumes via a short length of minimal depth/width channel through the slip site. This way of dealing with slips such as this leaves the whole site/area still in a mess that all needs clearing up afterwards, . . but it works, it's practical, it's proven and above all, it's safe, both for those working on site, and the boats and the people aboard passing through after re-opening, . . and it gets the navigation open again in a matter of hours. The cutting up and removal of the trees already done in Brinklow Cutting is absolutely the wrong way to go about this. All that has been achieved by what's been done so far, and what is proposed next, is to turn the possibility of further slippage at the same spot into what amounts to almost an absolute certainty. What should, and what WOULD, be happening under a responsible and competent navigation authority, is that the navigation is re-opened by the means described above, with appropriate signage clearly warning of the serious ground instability throughout the whole length of the cutting, . . and the consequential very high risk of further similar slips occuring, at ANY time and without ANY warning. An urgent program of work to reduce or eliminate the massive destabilizing forces from the trees on the sides of the cutting by means of extensive lopping, or removal of all the largest/heaviest overhanging trees along the whole length of the cutting, MUST then commence as a matter of urgency, and without any delay whatsoever. Pleasure boaters who use, have used, or intend to use the North Oxford in the future should NOT be under any illusions. Years of joint BWB/C&RT neglect of essential tree maintenance, lopping, and growth/size control, has left Brinklow Cutting in a very dangerous state, . . along its entire length. With the high number of neglected and now very much oversized, much too weighty, overhanging trees, along the length of the cutting on both sides of the canal, and the permanently wet unstable ground they're all standing and growing in, . . it is potentially a very dangerous place to be, whether walking through or boating through, . . irrespective of how much recent rainfall there may or may not have been. If nothing is done about all the oversized, overhanging trees that haven't yet fallen across the cutting, but could do without warning at any time, they're just going to keep coming down, . . and bringing more sizeable, potentially very dangerous, landslips full of yet more honking great overgrown trees down with them, . . with ever increasing regularity ! The navigation should have been re-opened to boat traffic in the way described above, . . moving and clearing the absolute minimum of slip material and tree debris from only the navigation channel itself. Everything on the towpath should have been left temporarily undisturbed, . . left to settle and naturally stabilise itself, to whatever extent it can, under the influence of gravity and its own bulk/mass and weight. Top priority MUST then be given over IMMEDIATELY to - again, as described above - lopping and/or felling, as necessary, all of those very much oversized, much too weighty, overhanging trees, along the length of the cutting on both sides of the canal. They are all standing and growing in permanently wet unstable ground, and any or all of them could start moving at any time, without warning, triggering more landslips when they do. Put simply and plainly, . . C&RT are getting this very wrong, . . top priority should, and must, be the prevention of further landslips, . . NOT the cosmetic clearing and tidying up of this one, . . or re-opening the towpath, . . or dredging the navigation channel back to its full width and depth." That one?

Does it have to be in Manchester, I think I would contact Stretford marine Services 0161 866 4819 or even the boat clubs down there

This is what the strainer ahead of the water pump is for. So you don't find out what is living in your water tank! Out of sight, out of mind. The water has to be healthy, if there are so many wriggly things happily living in it. I've read the OP's post a couple of times and can't decide if they are saying the bugs are coming straight from the shore water point, or from the on-board tank.