PhilAtterley

No, it does not help at all. You are not going to get anything like a good, reliable diagnosis of what, if anything, is wrong until someone who knows these boxes, and how they should sound and perform has checked it out and seen/heard it running.

Having now seen those photo's, the box looks to be direct drive so the suggestion I made about the source of the noise possibly being a chain and sprocket reduction box can be ruled out. I think to get a reliable and definitive answer to your question, you need someone who is familiar with these boxes to look at it and listen to it. The ticking could be anything from a chipped or damaged ball or track in a bearing, a loose and/or worn key or keys, worn or loose clutch pins/toggles, or even a bit of fencing wire caught round the propeller boss. The noise that is worrying you when operating in stern gear could be nothing more than the whining/howling that you always get from the straight cut gears in the epicyclic reverse train in this sort of box. I suggest you call Tony Dunkley on 07553 294325 - he is a first-class marine engineer of great experience and based in Nottingham, but I do know that he is going to be travelling up to the Liverpool area several times over the next few weeks.

Allowing for what you said about your boat being on the slow side, you probably got to Stockwith close to about half-tide - around 1800 hrs - when even a poorish Neap Flood would have had time to gather a bit of pace. If faced with the same situation again with a really swift tide running up at Stockwith, Keadby or Selby, and you do not want to wait for HW slack, lay the boat on the up-tide corner of the wall and motor in against a head spring - it's dead easy and works well, but only provided that you have got someone that knows how to handle ropes ashore, or you pass them an eye to drop over a stump/bollard and control the length yourself.

Those tides at around that time are predicted to make the sort of heights when you can start to expect small Aegres, which is from 8.0 m's (above CD) or higher. Barring tidal surges in the North Sea or tides that make well above prediction for any other reason, or continuing dry weather causing the Trent levels to drop exceptionally low along the whole length of the river, there will not be a significant Aegre, if there is one at all, on either of those days.

Yesterday's daylight tide at Hull was predicted for 6.53 m's at 1705 (BST) - so, a relatively 'small' tide, and only 5 x tides after the smallest Neap of this set which was at 0245 (BST) on Friday morning. That Sunday afternoon tide would have made Flood, in the sense of a rise in water level, at Keadby at around 1500 hrs, but would be unlikely to be running up at any sort of pace until the best part of an hour later. I would guess that you were in fact let out of Keadby Cut on the first of the Flood, but you might have thought it was the last of the Ebb because the river current would have been either slack or very sluggishly still running downriver. I would also guess that the time you were sent on your way might have had more to do with what time the lock keepers wanted to knock off and go home, rather than the ideal departure time for you and the other upriver boats. The best time for you to have aimed to arrive at Stockwith would have been around 1900 hrs, with the tide slacking off and only a few feet to rise up in the lock to canal level, thereby reducing the strong turbulence that pulls small boats about so much in the lock chamber there.

This must be the British Waterways version of the old joke with a solitary gate in the middle of nowhere and nothing in the way of fences or hedges on either side of it, or if I wanted to be unkind, I might suggest it had been installed by knuckledraggers for the sole benefit of other knuckledraggers. There are in fact other examples of this particular blunder along the Trent, where ladders stopping well short of normal river levels were installed in lockcut walls in the 70's and 80's.

Waterway Gazetteer for Kennet & Avon Canal confirms Bridge No. 192 - Pulteney Road Bridge - by Lock 8-9 Bath Deep Lock. The bridge number is visible to the right, above the lock-wheeler's head, and yes, I can see now - it is obviously quite impossible to get a line down the steps from the lockside onto the towpath under the bridge, and then bowhaul the boat out of the lock - no chance of doing that whatsoever, and as for the length of the line, it would have to be ridiculously long - 60' at the very least - only around 15' - 20' less than the standard 5 or 6 lb (pounds weight) cotton line that every pair of working boats carried for bowhauling and/or pulling the butty through single locks with the motor.

Thank you very much for posting that aerial photo. If there is a towpath under the bridge as you remember, and as it appears to be in the photo, then the method I described, which would be appropriate only if there was no towpath under the bridge, would not be needed at all. The line from the boat could be used briefly from the lockside by the bottom gates just to get the boat moving, then simply be passed over the top of the open gate, walked down the steps and under the bridge. It would seem that the perceived difficulties referred to earlier exist only in the minds of certain people with a fondness for climbing in and out of lock chambers on slimy ladders !

No - it still reads as though you are talking about yourself ! Try letting the dog have a go - I am sure it could do much better !

Unless someone is entirely happy at the prospect of having a close encounter with the 'Aegre' - the Trent's equivalent of the 'Severn Bore' - they need to be very selective and careful about picking their time to be hanging about in the river at Keadby at Low Water (Flood). Aegres can occur on the Trent along with big Spring tides, which in turn themselves occur on a 14-15 day cycle - the biggest tides usually being the fourth one after the New or Full Moon. The photo below shows a loaded barge aground in the river at Keadby being hit by an Aegre. Graveller Marnham. by Philip Sizer,

Is there any chance of you translating that into something that makes sense ?

The last time I was in that neck of the woods was around 48 years ago, when those locks down into the river at Bath were still derelict and awaiting repair. I went and looked at as many places along the whole length of the canal as I could get to by car after accompanying Tony Dunkley and Dave Houlston on some of their deliveries to Reading of Warwickshire coal loaded into 'Jaguar', 'Achilles', 'Hyperion' and 'Jupiter' at Atherstone for the K&A Restoration Society's Steam Dredger and Crofton Pumps in 1968-9. I do not have any plans to come down there again in the foreseeable future, but if that changes or you come up North with your boat then I would gladly give you a demonstration. I can quite understand how what I described would sound a bit alarming to someone who had never seen it done, or done it themselves, but it really is one of those things that are far easier in the doing than they sound in the telling.

Tony D was banned at around the time of the mass cull of faces that did not fit in 2016 :- 1 Breach of Site Rules Warning issued by wrigglefingers October 8, 2016 Penalty Given 1 points Note for member The decision to placed you in mod queue and a review of your recent posts has been made by the moderating team and the decision is to suspend you until further notice.

Completely irrelevant, and NOT what you claimed to have at all - the prosecution was brought by British Waterways, some 3 years before CRT came into existence.

Which is the same as Trent boat/bargemen did with the 4' eye in the end of the stop ropes that they sometimes had no option other than to climb slimey wet lockwall ladders with. However, it did not transform the practice into something safe, fun or done out of choice.

I have absolutely no idea - why would you want to buy such a boathook, when all you need is one that is long enough to pick up a line from on the boat whilst standing on the towpath immediately below the bottom gates and/or the bridge over the lock tail ?

This has nothing to do with being 'talented', or otherwise. I do not intend to waste any of my time or effort in responding to what you have written - far better to leave the readers of it to decide for themselves how much worth attaches to an opinion on how best to operate a lock from someone who closes paddles before opening gates, and talks about 'walking down' slimey, slippery vertical ladders with a rope in one hand !

The answer to your first question is - you do not even bother to try, because there is no need to. The significance of the last sentence in the post you were replying to seems to have escaped you - I said - " Carrying a boathook ashore suitable for picking up suitably coiled down and placed lines up forard would be a wise precaution." A 'suitable' boathook in this context would be one of sufficient length to enable you to reach and pick up the lines that you should/would have placed in appropriate positions BEFORE drawing the paddles. As for your perceived difficulties in getting a boat displacing a mere 30 tons moving by means of bowhauling - you could not be more wrong - I have seen children bowhauling (narrowboat) butties loaded with close to that tonnage. If you are not equal to the task, perhaps you should consider taking up a less physically demanding hobby.

British Waterways did install the odd ladder or two in some locks in the late 1960's, mainly on canalized river navigations, when the numbers of pleasure craft began to increase significantly, and some locks on river navigations like the Soar, and such as Cranfleet and Sawley on the upper Trent, where it was either very difficult or impossible to step ashore or aboard as the boat entered or left the empty chamber had always had them, but the wholesale fitting of two ladders in every lock on every waterway was certainly something that arose out of 70's and 80's H&S mania. The broad Northern canals and canalized rivers invariably made provision for getting off as the boat entered through, or waited in the bottom gates while the lock was drawn off, not with ladders in the chamber but by means of rungs or steps set in to the gates themselves.

I will take that as a compliment - thank you very much. I hope I can continue to live up to it !

In fact, it is not what they are for. The ladders that have been installed in canal locks, both single and double, in recent years have been put there solely for the purpose of meeting today's Health & Safety concerns - so that anyone falling into an empty or part empty lock, which these days will almost certainly have both sets of gates shut, can climb out of the chamber. Back in the working days of our canals there were no ladders in lock chambers, but the bigger locks on rivers such as the Trent were equipped with them, and despite being kept relatively free of slime through frequent use, climbing them was nobody's idea of fun, and is certainly something that would never be done unless there was absolutely no alternative.

Not a good idea with such short pounds ahead of and behind you !

I think , definitely, that you should assemble your facts carefully and ensure that you are sufficiently well informed before making wild accusations about wild accusations !

Climbing up or down slimy ladders in lock chamber walls is never a good idea, especially as there has been a tendency in recent years to fit ladders into insufficiently deep recesses which do not let you get your feet far enough on to the rungs to be sure that they will not slip off them. A better and safer way of getting back onto the boat pictured in the deep lock a few posts back would have been to get it moving by bowhauling with a line off the stern to get it moving enough to carry it's way under the bridge (that the photographer must have been standing on), and then get back onboard on the other side of the bridge. Carrying a boathook ashore suitable for picking up suitably coiled down and placed lines up forard would be a wise precaution.

You have shifted the question from the legality of CRT's contempt of statute to approval, or otherwise, of management methods. What precisely is it we are talking about here ? - approval of lying, fraud and criminality by a speculative and infinitely variable number of boaters, or just plain old-fashioned bad management ?