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Chertsey

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Posts posted by Chertsey

  1. Well this is jolly exciting - thank you David Mack for alerting me. I've only looked through the thread once and this is my first, possibly ill-informed thoughts, but here goes.

    I agree that's almost certainly 'Waterways' ; no way can I make it look like GUCCCo. It's hard though to square that with what does look like three female crew.

    There's no particular reason to think that it is Chertsey. Don't be misled by the current colour scheme.  I have no evidence that Chertsey ever was painted like that. On the other hand, I have no photos of Chertsey between 1937 (when that one at Northampton was taken) and about 1963, so anything's possible. It would have to be pre-1960 when the Petter was fitted.

    Can we date the men's clothes at all?

    Is it significant that the mastboxes and the stands don't seem to be painted?

    The motor in particular looks to be in pretty poor repair - does that help date it?

     

    My gut feeling is that it's not Chertsey. I'd have a better idea if it was the stern end!

    • Greenie 1
  2. A colleague (and a picket, actually) has just stopped me on my way into work and asked about the traffic light signals on the Ouseburn Barrage - specifically, why there are three of each (red and green) light in a vertical column - how are they used?

     

    I had never heard of the Ouseburn, or its barrage, so I have had an informative ten minutes already.

  3. On 29/08/2019 at 22:30, PD1964 said:

    A link to an interesting old film of the S&SY

    http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/film/rotherham-seaport-town

     

    Thank you for that film, it's fabulous. I've walked from Sheffield Basin to the bottom of the locks a few times this year (and once to Rotherham) and could recognise a few bits. Good to be able to place the Tinsley towers too, I could never quite work out where they were in relation to the canal.

  4. 8 hours ago, pete harrison said:

    I have clearly missed out on an important aspect of the Braunston Show as in all the years I have been coming to it I have never noticed clothes or hat stalls. Perhaps the smell of rust and Brasso keeps me suitably distracted. 

     

    I did notice quite a number of 'chuggers' this year, but I must appear to be especially down at heel as none approached me on my couple of visits to the retail area :captain:

     

    edit = is the clothes stand the place where I could have acquired a red neckerchief, waistcoat and bowler hat as I feel like I might be missing out !

    Used to be up the end of the arm by the toilets; I relied on them for my annual purchase of hippy dresses and patchwork trousers.

    'Historic costume' is all very well for the blokes; scariest thing I've ever done was going down to stop the engine in a long skirt.

  5. Sorry just to pop up and ask this (I have been very busy at work...)

    I heard via my son's Facebook connections that an old friend (he was in fact one of my PhD supervisors and a witness at my wedding, but we had lost touch) was killed in a boating accident in Rotterdam on September 30th. I don't know what sort of boat it was or whether it was at sea or inland.

    If it had been in the UK, we could have looked up MAIB reports, local press etc - but we (Jim has done most of the looking) haven't been able to find anything about what actually happened.

    Is there a Dutch equivalent to MAIB or some other avenue we could pursue to fill in the gaps? I don't want to go badgering his family as we hadn't been in touch for about fifteen years, but I liked him a great deal and would - for some reason - like to find out what happened.

  6. 10 hours ago, haggis said:

    Come on guys, stop pouring cold water on the idea. I WANT to see a circus performance on the front of a boat. With a bit enough front deck, you could have performing dogs, cats, bunnies and such delights as jugglers and acrobats, although a high wire might be a bit challenging to erect.  Just think, a wrong step in any direction..... yes, to me the possible entertainment is endless, sad person that I am :-)

    haggis

     

    Get a working boat, you could rig up a tightrope from back end to deck board - or at least to the mast.

  7. Just had Chertsey done in Ballistic so ask me in five years. It certainly looks the business (i.e. it's not smooth and it's not shiny).

    tunnel+bands.JPGblacking.JPG

    So much of it seems to be about preparation - I've always used Comastic before - and always on shotblasted bare metal. Chertsey's was still unbreached - other than scrapes on the most exposed guard irons - after seven years. I wouldn't fancy the chances of any product on a surface that wasn't scrupulously prepared.

    People will shotblast before applying two pack, because it's so expensive and they know that it's necessary to get optimum performance from it - but if you're going to shotblast, and black really well, a cheaper product might well work just as well - it's the shotblasting that makes the real difference.

  8. On 26/06/2017 at 01:55, NigelMoore said:

    Mind you, the primary reason given to Leigh's Judge by Mr Stoner for CaRT's failure to enforce byelaws, is that as a benign Charity, they want to avoid criminalising their clients. There's nice now.

    The same tactics used against people who wouldn't or couldn't pay the poll tax - why send them to prison and create martyrs, when you can ruin them financially, and for a lesser burden of proof.

    • Greenie 1
  9. On 27/06/2017 at 20:36, pete harrison said:

    I have not yet found a definitive list of which motor boats were fitted with Petter PD2's by 'British Waterways', but I have carried out just a little research.

    G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. motors fitted with Petter PD2 by 'British Waterways' = 68

    G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. motors possibly fitted with Petter PD2 by 'British Waterways' = 6 (this means an absolute maximum of 74 and I can account for all others which remained National)

    G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. motors definitely not fitted with Petter PD2 by 'British Waterways' = 72 (includes all former G.U.C.C.Co. Ltd. motors nationalised in 1948)

     

    I make that eight remaining out of 68 then - blimey.

  10. So, a follow up question... How many PD2s were fitted by BW during that late 50s/early 60s shift to air cooled (compared to how many Listers) and did they start with one sort and then change, or were they fitting both in different boats simultaneously?

     

    PS I believe that Chertsey's current PD2 is out of Rufford, and the one out of Chertsey is in my shed :-)

  11. Apologies, I am pretty sure I've asked this before, about seven years ago, but a. the search function on here is as terrible as ever, and b. things may well have changed in that time.
    When I first bought Chertsey, I recall being told that about 20 boats still had PD2s in them. I now wonder whether that was a misremembering, misinformation, or is now just out of date...

    Yesterday I could think of only five: Aldgate, Alton, Cassiopeia, Chertsey and Darley. Plus Lancing has recently had one taken out.

    Are there loads I've forgotten (or never known about)? And/or have others been 'lost' to the world of historic narrow boating recently?

    (I am sure there will be some replies that make me go 'oh god, how could I have forgotten that one...)

  12. Back to butter... is it good for you... well, you need some fat both to get fat soluble vitamins and to make vital hormones, which is why cutting down too much makes you miserable as well as unhealthy. Saturated fat and dietary cholesterol isn't nearly as bad for you as they thought in the eighties, while artificially hydrogenated ones (hardened vegetable oils) are much, much worse. So... butter isn't as bad for you as many other things and it's NICE so yes indeed, lots and lots of people do use it.

    The downside of course is that it won't spread when cold, which is very frustrating on the boat when the ambient temperature is below about 15C .

    When I was a child my mother used to keep the butter in the oven, where the pilot light kept it soft. This was fine except on the numerous occasions she forgot to take it out before turning the oven on.

    I keep butter out of the fridge and sometimes have some on the go for weeks at a time, and it doesn't seem to go off at all.

  13. 4 hours ago, Robbo said:

    A question could be, could I do with out a fridge? I've done without for a few years, but I rarely cook and buy daily.  Stuff like butter is usually hardest as you can't buy it in small enough quantities.  Milk will usually last a day in summer when kept in a cool enough place.

    Why would you keep butter in the fridge? It would indeed be the hardest...

    I've been boating a few years without a fridge and here are a few ideas...

    Find the coolest place in the boat - this is likely to be below the waterline. That you you get any advantages there might be from the coolness of the water without getting anything wet. Try to insulate this from the warmer places - eg, a bit of polystyrene on the top/between it and where the sun shines.

    Insulated boxes are useless unless you actually have a means of cooling them - be that electrical (any cheap - peltier effect - cooling mechanism will eat electricity) or with ice blocks. Without this they'll just keep the heat in.

    If you must have fresh milk, buy the filtered sort - it really does keep longer. The logic being that warmth will cause all bacteria to multiply faster, but the fewer you have to start with the longer it will take them to reach critical mass. Same goes for UHT milk. Keep it open as little as possible. We boat with soya milk - it's just easier to store, seems to keep a long time, and is marginallly nicer than UHT cows' milk.

    Let the shop be your fridge - only buy meat if you're going to use it that day. Or let the pub store and cook it for you. We never buy raw meat - we'll have it when we eat out but base meals round tinned pulses when cooking on the boat.

    Trust your eyes and your nose rather than what it says on the label - whether it's before OR after its date.

    Live yogurt doesn't go off - it just gets more yogurty (the yogurt bacteria overwhelm any nasty ones). Pasteurised yogurt will.

    Be prepared to use stuff as it needs using and base meals around this rather than having a fixed plan.

    Don't dismiss tins - part of the fun of boating is eating stuff you wouldn't have at home. Tinned steak makes a great stew. Or corned beef (if you can't cope without daily meat)

    Most stuff doesn't go off, and of the stuff that does, most of it won't kill you, so just minimise the amount of perishable stuff you need to use.

    • Greenie 2
  14. This is from Michael Ware's Narrow Boats at Work and suggests that not only is diagonal desirable, but that it should be deployed on every possible surface.

    IMG_1181.JPG

    I found some offcuts of 4" diagaonal squares at Barnsley Market in 2006, but could only get straight 4" squares for Chertsey's back cabin, and that from a shop in Penkridge that has now closed down.

    IMG_1178.JPG

    In the hold we now have 6" diagonal squares. I'm hoping we can still get that; I want it for the kitchen in my house!

     

     

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