DHutch

Seems reasonable to me! Daniel

Wasn't a problem at all till the last couple of years. £220/ton £20 a day, easy to buy, best Welsh. Locally sourced, smokeless, good steam raising, delivered canalside on a pallet. However since buying anything from Russa fell out of favour, and the Welsh decided they want to keep it underground. Coal has quadrupled in price, and massively decreased in quality. So yeah, sigh! We are still a Dutch barge style steam narrowboat, however! Dutch barge style narrowboats often have slightly wider gunnels, if your lucky you even get some shear on them running fore-aft. So yes, with a wider gunnel, slightly deeper draught than some, the mild amount of tumble home 'conventional' boats have is mitigated. We're around 2ft9 draft which we need for a decent prop for the slower engine anyway, and fit through all the bridge and low tunnels anyone else does. While still having plenty of room for someone 6ft2 to walk through the doorways and along the boat. The doors are full width to the top too! Daniel

Sounds good. Do you have a link to a example test report?

Rightly or wrongly, for our 22ton 58ft boat with have a 25kg Danforth. Maybe a cobra type would be as good or better? As said, equally key is a good length of heavy chain, because you want the force to be dragging the anchor along the bed, not upwards toward the boat. Without the chain the length of rope would be prohibitively and problematically long in order to make a good angle with the riverbed. We actually have all chain and a chain winch on the box, but that isnt necessarily any better a setup and makes deploying from the stern problematic, which might well be the best option if travelling downstream.

Don't want to go off topic too much, but was there not a member on here who lost the centreline fixing and or fairlead in a lock, with it hitting them in the arm with enough force to require medical attention. We have reasonably strong 100mm dia fabricated bollards weld into the boat, not up to ship standards but better than most t-studs and dollies, but or centreline fixing is just an M10-12 eye hook in the roof, so we have a check strap from the centreline to the handrail.

The issues with steam calliopes is the tune to each whistle changes somewhat with temperature, which changes significantly depending when they where last sounded, so perfect tuning is impossible! It is also the case they are hard to tune at all, in part because of the above but also due to having to manually change the tube of each whistle, so many could likely be much better than they are! All part of the charm isnt it.....? Do it all the time, great fun hearing the tyres shriek as they emergency stop. It has been know on occasion! Only we don't have a horn, we have a full size replicate A4 Locomotive whistle with 150-200psi of live steam behind it! See also this! Getting slightly more on topic, it appears that these are electromatic type horns, pair of with long trumpet, rather than airhorns with a compressor. Hence the current draw should be manageable and only around twice a normal single horn. As said, might also need the gap adjustment making. But I would still try the same sorts of thing of testing it with the engine running, or directly with a short lead of the battery, else as always, approach the seller for their answers!!

Agree, Please use the 'report' button on one of the threads, but provide a link to the other(s), if you are not able to to that, a clear description of the other threads title/location. Obviously some times it is very clear, two threads with identical titles posted in close proximity by the same user. However other times the report can be for the same content in two threads of very different titles and this can be much more time consuming. Thanks Daniel

Is this issue resolved?

As did Wigglefingers, she worked all over as a supply teacher. Equally true.

Agree! Very happy for some light hearted discussion, but the underlying theme has to be looking to bring some new faces into the team to replace those who no longer have time to staff the site for us. Perhaps. Although you wouldn't the the first teacher to grace the team. Current teaching has also moved in style I believe!

Correct In effect, yes. Presumably it tells the site the screen is a different physical width to that which is actually is, then can be useful for sites which are poorly formatted for mobile use, or if you are upscaling the mobile screen onto a larger display. My phone will quite happily run a 24" hdmi monitor and keyboard from its USB-C port. This also give the advantage that for mid sized displays such as tablets, the site scales to a mid size layout, rather than having to pick the 'desktop' or 'mobile' view. Very frustrating, especially as it's not widely obviously what has driven the change. Obviously something has changed, and I don't believe it's anything from our side. Safari will likely remember different settings for different sites, so if you haven't already, I would try the suggestion made by 'Hudds Lad' of using the Aa buttons to adjust the level of zoom. Else as said, using Chrome browser would be another option. Daniel

That's an improvement on my English experience, when a teacher said to me "If you don't like Shakespeare, I'm not prepared to teach you" or words closely to the effect. Remember it clearly to this day, the stupid prick. There is some truth in that, and certainly there will be discussion about potential candidates, both those who out their name forward and those who dont, within the site staff. I'm also agree it would be desirable to have an female within the active site staff team is a suitable candidate can be found. Futhermore if members have someone they this would be a good candidate we're very to people coming forward with suggestions, which again can be discussed as part of the selection process. I'm not at all against having a number of new members to the team, one would be a minimum, two would be nice, three absolutely fine if we end up with several good candidates. Thanks

Firstly can I say thanks to Rich M for starting this topic and his time running the technical aspects of the site. And also obviously an absolutely huge thank you to all our or moderator past and present for the work they do in staffing the site, without which we quite honestly wouldn't have a forum to us. Laid out in black and white, the task of a moderator might look quite daunting. However if you use the site fairly regularly, either making posts or just quietly reading and enjoying the information, you really all most of the way there. Aware of how the content as it comes and goes, how the site runs, the ebb and flow of the community. We try to keep moderator interventions to a minimum, and a lot of the steering happens as much from the core members as the site staff. However, obviously and as any regular member will know sometimes some intervention is required, be that a lovely debate that's got out of hand, a duplicate topic or post in the wrong section, or the occasional spam post which gets through the systems. That is where the moderator team comes in. Sometimes the action is quick and easy and you can just effect it, no more complicated that making a post on the site really, else there is also a behind the scenes 'report centre' where you can discuss a potential action with the rest of the team, and it is a team, we work together, and as a back stop I am never more than a phonecall away and can be on call 24/7 incase of an urgent matters. Although often seen as the 'site owner' the role is much more as custodian, I joined the team as a moderator myself before taking the lead when the founder wanted to take a step back, and it has always been a forum for members run by members. Thanks Daniel

Your spelling of neither is wrong.

I am late to the topic, and have not read all the posts, but personally I dont understand why those without a home mooring should or would pay more? Those with a mooring, pay for it, just like you pay for anything else you use or want to pay for, those without do not. Vehicle tax isn't lower if you own a driveway or garage. - If the proposal is to charge boaters who cover more miles more money, having a home mooring is a poor metric. There are boats with a home mooring which done move much, but also boats with a home mooring who are on the move a large amount of the time, move days through out the year bar winter. Likewise these are boats without home moorings which move the odd day here and there, and again those which barely stop. - If the proposal is the charge those boats who currently pay less overall for their years boating more, as some sort of surcharge for not wanting someone, or some sort of pretence that those who don't have the costs of a home mooring have more capital to give to CRT is also hugely flawed and likely fairly irrelevant if it wasn't, unless we are going to make boating fees means tested. Furthermore I am not even sure it makes much sense to charge the licence fee based on length, as unless your looking at towpath moorings in built up areas, or have a boat short enough it can share a lock with another AND have a second shorter boat with it to actually share, the length hasn't got a lot to do with how much you 'use' the waterway either. Maybe its a bit of a proxy for how wealthy the owner is? Mahhh! Its tough, because clearly CRT need money to run the canals, and their other income is being squeezed, rock and a hard place. But equally, while licence fee is only 10% of CRTs income, the same fee is often only 10% of a boaters committed costs, when you add in the other overheads. Insurance, routine running costs, fuel, scheduled maintenance like drydocking, hull 4-5 year survey etc. And all of these costs are going up too. Daniel

Searching the canal plan boat list but builder for "water craft" gives 27 records, predominantly narrowboats, including EmilyAnne. Obviously there may have bene other builders using the same name, or boats built by this builder listed with slightly different details, but there are none listed as 'watercraft' or 'water craft ltd' so it appears broadly consistent data. The list gives boat names, dimensions, registration number (from which you could work out the approx. date or registration) but not location or obviously and contact details, photos, etc. https://canalplan.uk/boats/boats.php

Thanks Richard as always.

Can you run a poly-vee pulley onto the flywheel?

Thanks John, Good information by yourself and others here on the firm and other firms in the areas. Somewhere, I have a letter from my grandfather instructing the firm/proprietor to begin the build of the boat in question, although I cannot currently put my hand on the image I took of it, and the physical document is in at my parents not our house. Does anyone know of any other boats made by Watercraft? Daniel

Always a good do at Norbury!

You've been banned too then Martin? Lovely! Sounds a bit like setting up a domain registration where the contact email address is an email address connected to that domain!

Yes, there will be a bit of this as the DNS servers around the world all update at different times. Both in reverting to the holding page when the domain expired, and coming back to the forum servers when we renewed half a day later. Sorry for the inconvenience. Daniel

Yes. Appears they got swallowed up by ABC Leisure. Interesting, but presumably unrelated? I was two at the time andas far as I know never visited. However that does half ring a bell with a similar description given during a conversation with someone local when we where down that way with the boat. And I'm fairly sure they where based by Diglis Basin as another name which half rings a bell. Daniel

Well, it's in now, Saturday 1st March 2031.