Waterway2go

When I saw the headimg "extreme flue pipe" it reminded me of the early days of the campaign to save the Forth & Clyde Canal from piecemeal obliteration. In 1975 this former swing bridge was about to be replaced with an armco tube so in an attempt to stop the work this barge was fitted with a stove and flue which just cleared the bridge. The just graduated lawyer pictured obtained an interim interdict against the County Council to stop the work. It was a spurious case that stood no chance of sticking, but it did result in some useful publicity, and a Parliamentary Question. The armco tube went ahead but was later replaced with a proper bridge with acceptable headroom.

I wish you the best of luck with Stourton. But mention of design work and planning permission suggests a long wait until traffic starts moving again with all the risks involved - not least the canal silting up again. Can you not carry on using the old wharf even with reduced visits to keep the channel clear?

Did the sand barges ever get started again? I saw publicity about a new vessel MMS Offroader, but nothing seems to have moved since.

A working boatman once showed me how to deal with this. Break off a suitable small branch of an overhanging tree and shove it up and down the chimney a few times (whilst continuing to steer the boat with your other hand). The result is two-fold: a cleaner chimney, and one less overhanging branch that can knock your water can off the roof.

In Glasgow prisoners being transported to Australia were held in Maryhill Barracks before being put on barges heading west to the Clyde to board larger ships. The place where they joined the barges is still known as "the Butney", a corruption of Botany Bay.

Nice thought, although the Caledonian Canal summit is largely a natural Loch. The Forth & Clyde Canal summit is 16 miles long plus the 4 mile Glasgow Branch making a 20 mile reservoir. Although not originally planned as a water storage feature it has now been re-purposed as a flood water storage system. The Glasgow Integrated Water Management Scheme allows the canal summit to be lowered by up to a maximum of 100mm. before heavy rain so that an enhanced land drainage system can send large volumes of water into the canal quickly, thus opening up areas of land in the City that could not otherwise be developed. Scottish Canals earn a tidy sum from the City Council each year as a result. Mor information here: https://waterprojectsonline.com/custom_case_study/smart-canal-2022/

The answer to your question is found in section 107 of the 1968 Act, under the rathr unhelpful heading "Amendments as to general duties of Board". It reads-- "(2)It shall be the duty of the Board— (a)to secure that each of the inland waterways comprised in their undertaking which is not a commercial waterway or cruising waterway is dealt with in the most economical manner possible (consistent, in the case of a waterway which is retained, with the requirements of public health and the preservation of amenity and safety), whether by retaining and managing the waterway, by developing or eliminating it, or by disposing of it;. . ." What is unclear to me is whether this section applies to C&RT. Generally the Act has been amended to include the words in each relevant section" . . the Board, or as the case may be, the C&RT" but those words do not appear in the amended section 107. This is a very old piece of legislation, amended many times in the last 50 years so it is just possible that a mistake has been made either in the drafting of amendments or in the updating of the legislation.gov.uk website.

Is there any news of the sand traffic to Leeds restarting? Fusedale and Farndale both appeared briefly on AIS a week or so ago.

It is entirely filled with good clean fresh water. Well, it is most of the time as the Crinan Canal has a fairly limited water supply and a very short summit pound. and was partly closed for a while this year due to lack of water. The biggest problem is the long embankment past Bellanoch at the western end of the canal, which has leaked constantly for many years. The man currently in charge recently told me that when he first joined BWB he was sent to Crinan for a long cold winter (as every young graduate Civil Engineer has been ever since) to find a solution to the leaky embankment. He was convinced he knew what to do: but it didn't work, and no-one yet has the answer. A back-pumping system was installed a few years ago to lift sea water up passed Crinan Sea Lock and the one above (lock14) so your assumption of brackish water would have been right a few years ago in that one area; but not any more as salt water upsets the ecological balance in a SSSI. I've attached a photo showing the embankment with the sea beyond and one of the rocky outcrops on this section. Photo taken from the stern of the steam puffer, VIC32.

That's not entirely the case. as the public at large have a right to expect a certain standard of maintenance. Canal & Rivers Trust have a statutory obligation to maintain waterways. This is what section 105 of the '68 Act ( as updated in 2012 to include CRT) says: " 105Maintenance of waterways.U.K. (1)With a view to securing the general availability of the commercial and cruising waterways for public use, it shall be the duty of the Waterways Board and of Canal & River Trust, in relation to the waterways comprised in their respective undertakings, subject to the provisions of this section— (a)to maintain the commercial waterways in a suitable condition for use by commercial freight-carrying vessels; and (b)to maintain the cruising waterways in a suitable condition for use by cruising craft, that is to say, vessels constructed or adapted for the carriage of passengers and driven by mechanical power." The problem now is that whilst originally this statutory obligation was placed on BWB, so that if it was unable to meet the obligation then Government as the ultimate owners of BWB would normally be expected to step in with more resources. Now that the statutory oblgation is placed on a charity a lack of resources means that they just say "we don't have enough money" and Government can claim it is no longer their responsibiity.

In the early 1970's I aquired two ex naval lighters that had been used previously as maintenance boats by BWB. They were (apparently) former ammunition lighters used on the Clyde - some said that they were for transporting torpedoes, but i never hnew the true story. On the left in this picture you can see what was left of the original configuration with a coaming around the hold and a separate coaming around the cockpit. The barge on the right has had a rough steel cabin fitted. They were both about 35ft long and 7'6" wide and swim ended with a large tiller steered rudder. They were widely used in the early campaigns on the Forth & Clyde Canal, often horse-drawn as seen here at the opening of a canalside pub. The Whisky barrels were, unfortunately, empty. One of these barges was sold, sent south and became a house on the River Ely

The website information is out of date and I raised this with Scottish Canals. This is the reply. Hi Richard, Thanks for raising. As you know, our website isn’t fit for purpose any more, hence why we’re looking at a new website as updates are currently posted on numerous locations, making it challenging to keep on top of. I have asked the team to amend the location you refer to – please see the link below which no longer refers to limited navigation: www.scottishcanals.co.uk/activities/boating/forth-clyde-union-canals/ Would appreciate it if you could post a comment on the forum saying that it has now been amended? Josie Josie Saunders Head of Corporate Affairs

so if a whale can pass Hammersmith so could a submarine. We'll all live on a narrow submarine . . .

The Falkirk Wheel was the reason why the £85million Millennium Link project won approval for Lottery money. There was a long period of negotiation with funders, including European Regional Development Funds for both east and west of Scotland, but the feedback from the Lottery was that just restoring two closed canals alone was not innovative enough. It was the wheel that clinched it. So maybe the Runcorn promoters are thinking along similar lines.

Any change of status of a waterways, such as from Remainder to Cruising, must be done with a Statutory Instrument like the one shown here covering the Scottish Lowland Canals which were re-opened to through navigation at the Millennium. Although the British Waterways Board no longer operates in England, C&RT is still governed by the same set of Transport Acts so a similar procedure will apply in England. reclassification order 2011.pdf

Fear not, British Waterways is still alive and well. It operates only in Scotland where it is known under its trading name of "Scottish Canals". See: British Waterways Annual Report & Accounts 2019/2020 Accounts presented to the Scottish Parliament pursuant to section 24 (3) of the Transport Act 1962 as amended by The British Waterways Board (Transfer of Functions) Order 2012, article 2(2) and paragraph 15 of Schedule 2 and article 5(1) and paragraph 3 of Schedule 4. The Annual Report which is required to be presented to the Scottish Parliament pursuant to section 27 (8c) of the Transport Act 1962 as amended by The British Waterways Board (Transfer of Functions) Order 2012, paragraph 17(5) of Schedule 2 will be published separately.

I bet someone is now regretting paying attention to a mobile phone call just as the wind picked up

Wagon boats were used on the Forth & Clyde Canal in the early 19th century, both for carts and railway trucks. This picture is from Guthrie Hutton's 1991 book, A Forth & Clyde Canalalbum, published by Stenlake and available on Amazon etc. I hope that enough of a plug so that Guthrie doesn't ring me to ask why I copied from his book !!

Sadly the traffic in fishing boats has collapsed this year. The Caledonian Canal only re-opened in July after lockdown and delayed repair works, with reduced depth. In a report for the IWA navigation committee it was noted that through August and September only 9 commercial transits were made. These include 1 naval, 1 RNLI, 1 new-build passenger boat on delivery, and 6 workboats or crew transfer vessels – usually employed on North Sea oil and gas work. Most unusually no fishing boats were spotted in that time, although one was seen at the start of October.

A couple of photos of the boat that Iain referred to "White Wing" from the Scottish Fisheries Museum at Anstruther. She is seen here at a later event in Kirkintilloch -the skipper insisted on having a shot on the horse that had been towing them

There's a news clip from 1979 featuring a SIWA rally on the Forth & Clyde in Glasgow, here https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/T0144/74958263

The real answer is that the smoke comes from VIC32, the coal fired Puffer, which occasionally gets a free lift from the Navy

A wire coat hanger. The wire is just pliable enough to be shaped by hand and strong enough to handle a variety of "get you home" tasks. Past uses have included: a temporary replacement for a broken pulley block on a cable steering system; and a hook that could be attached to the end of a broom to act as a makeshift boathook.

That canoe trail website contains this gem: "Most swing bridges need to be unlocked and either manually or electronically operated, so portaging (as it's known) saves you time and saves water in the canal." First time I've heard of a bridge that wastes water.

Arthur Bray managed a bit of hopping on and off well into later years. Have Humans stopped evolving in recent years - or are we just more sensible?