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TheBiscuits

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Everything posted by TheBiscuits

  1. TheBiscuits
    You can still do both ends, just not transit Wigan Junction to Leeds, so you have to miss some of the nicest bits. Liverpool is well worth doing if you come up this way, and full length locks all the way. You could also do the Rochdale while you're nearby.
  2. TheBiscuits
    While I agree you don't need to be worried about it, it's definitely worth giving the outside of the skin tank a good scrape back to steel before blacking it again. There a quite a few boats that overheat because they have half an inch of bitumen blacking on the outside of the skin tank, and they usually only find this out when needing to push hard on a river...
  3. TheBiscuits
    Hank it and hang it off the T stud. Add: when not locking, obviously! When locking, it's easier to have it by the steerer so they can throw a coil up or pass it up on the boathook.
  4. TheBiscuits
    It's easier to go diagonally across the lock, as you gain a precious few inches from the angle of the tailgates. You also miss the jet from the gate mitres, but can catch the jet from the heel post instead. You do have to go through that position to get past the shut gate though. Yeah, I don't like cratch covers either ... It can be done singlehanded, but very slowly and with bow and stern lines.
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  6. TheBiscuits
    I initially read that as your route plan so had to re-read the post. I also had to check it wasn't a @Laurie Booth BCN challenge strategy!
  7. TheBiscuits
    A milkpan has a pouring spout on one side or the other or sometimes both. If it's only one spout it's a "handed" pan, so can be awkward to use with the "wrong" hand.
  8. TheBiscuits
    Yes.
  9. TheBiscuits
    Try a much longer locking line, from the bow to the stern plus twice the lock depth plus a bit extra. The extra leverage compared to a centreline is significant, and makes it much easier to control the boat using a line. The lockwheeler drapes the line round two or three bollards and back to the steerer, who ideally has a handrail or cleat to pass the standing end round to reduce arm strain. It works very well and saves a lot of sloshing around or burning diesel when taking a single narrowboat through broad locks. I know they say wait for another boat to share with, but that can be a 3 month project on the Rochdale!
  10. TheBiscuits
    So it fits on the Oxford
  11. TheBiscuits
    Sorry, can't find it via my phone. @NigelMoore posted the minutes of the Select Committee that discussed the whole "boats without a home mooring" thing that ended up being written into the 1995 act. It has been extensively discussed on here, but none of it ever had anything to with traditional Romany boat dwellers!
  12. TheBiscuits
    X 12'6?
  13. TheBiscuits
    Not if the weed hatch isn't secured. I've seen 15 seconds of reverse being enough to drop the engine bay air vents below the waterline, and after that it's a salvage job. They only dipped momentarily, but that's enough to swamp the boat, and also probably pushed the (unattached) weedhatch top below the water at the same time.
  14. TheBiscuits
    Can you back up that statement with any evidence? It's completely different to my understanding of how it came to be included in the 1995 Act. Thanks.
  15. TheBiscuits
    Add it to @Pluto's list of surviving shortboats. April 2007
  16. TheBiscuits
    Is it not like varnish then? You should have used the other one ...
  17. TheBiscuits
    The bridge at Bidford wouldn't be great to shoot backwards in a dinghy when the water is above the arches!
  18. TheBiscuits
    That makes more sense, as I discussed above. There's a huge energy saving available if you are only powering the "thumb on the scales" compared to powering the whole lift of all the weight.
  19. TheBiscuits
    As a matter of interest, canalplan makes the proposed round trip a 16 hour journey of 45 miles, 7 locks, 2 boat lifts, 3 tunnels and an inclined plane. This doesn't allow for any waits at tunnels or boat lifts. On a passenger boat that has to fit through Preston Brook ...
  20. TheBiscuits
    The Anderton lift is two independent caissons with their own counterweights now. It was originally built as a balanced pair of course, but they can and do only use one side sometimes. I'm sure the plane could be made to work without a counterweight, but it would be a lot less efficient. The Falkirk Wheel visitor centre take great pleasure in telling people it only takes 1.5 kWh to do a rotation, similar to boiling a few kettles, as part of their eco messaging. Yanking a caisson uphill full of water would take a lot more power than that, and a regenerative braking system for the descent probably wouldn't get most of the energy back each trip. Less green credentials and costs more to run.
  21. TheBiscuits
    The survey asks how much you'd consider paying for a trip boat round the ring. I did think it would be a very long trip, but reckoned it might be worth £50, as that's the cost of the MSC trip on the Mersey Ferry including the coach back to your starting point. I agree that if the lift and plane aren't counterbalanced it would be bad engineering, but it doesn't need an opposing caisson, just a counterweight of the same mass as the full caisson. It does more than double the transit time per boat though. They are quoting 2 hours for the lift, 2 locks and the inclined plane, so that needs adding to the trip timing, along with delays at the tunnels and the wait for the Anderton lift plus the locks...
  22. TheBiscuits
    Ok, so I got autocorrected, but I thought it was clear enough! @BlueStringPudding did you try switching a load on and checking again?
  23. TheBiscuits
    The counterpoint to this is that I would pay to use an inclined plane on my boat. Probably only once each way, but I would. I'm also interested in the thinking behind the Runcorn ring boat trip. Use our little boat lift and locks and then we'll take you through some big locks and a big boat lift that already run a trip boat... If there is demand for this trip route it could already be running one way each time, the way the Mersey ferry does the Liverpool to Salford run. You wouldn't even need a coach to bring the passengers back to the other end. A short walk up or down the hill gets back to the starting point.
  24. TheBiscuits
    Switch a load on, the larger the better. I suspect your batteries are full! The display only shows what the Victorian is doing, so earlier the SunSaver might have been doing more work - remember the previous discussion about having two separate solar arrays.
  25. TheBiscuits
    Well they wood, wooden they! (With apologies to Mandy Rice-Davies!)
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