magpie patrick

User operation is one thing, remote user operation is quite another! (I assume we're talking big river locks here, I don't want to see narrow locks suddenly becoming electrified and whistle operated!) The technology would be easy for one isolated boat, but would get messy with more, and would need a lot of safeguards. For example, I can open the gates to my storage depot (so I can get the car to the unit) from anywhere. No big deal as they close again fairly quickly and if I do it accidentally then no real harm. A lock would need some kind of proximity safety catch. At the moment the proximity catch is you need to be there with a key - very simple. If you're not you can't work the lock. There are systems on the continent that allow this kind of thing but they all have remote supervision. Given the way our canals are going, do you really want a volocky monitoring ten cameras along the trent? I'd rather the volocky was lockside, with me, or just me, no volocky at all.

But you're actually in Wales!!!! No need for getting all sentimental over a flag, you are in the land where a phone call to God is charged local rates! I mean Halifax, really.... May the ghost of Gaux Barge disturb his sleep...

As part of this drive to rid ourselves of diesel, all railways will be electrified. Many canals are next to railways and most are near one, so with a bit of realignment (preferably of the railway) boats could be towed by trains...

Okay, I've now read all the relevant bits in Faulkner and am enlightened!! I need to go back and have a look at lots of other bits of the Grand Junction too - I've hardly seen most of it, although I already knew it had some interesting and unusual arrangements regarding water management for example. If I've got this right - the 23 locks from Bulbourne to Stoke Hammond were duplicated with narrow locks, then two were not duplicated at all (Fenny and Cosgrove) then Stoke Bruence had wide duplicates. The rationale for the latter escapes me as the narrow duplicates weren't for capacity but to save water.... @1st ade, I may need to stay for a few days sometime

I've just had the problem on the laptop - clearing the cache seems to have resolved it for the moment - I'll be back if it stops working again! I set fire to it...

I'm not at all sure CRT are the right people to be running museums anyway (other than the great big one that connects most of England and bits of Wales) - it's very different skill set to running a waterway network. There is almost no management overlap with the core business, and of course you end up with this problem, an organisation charged with looking after the waterways is subsidising it's museums. Running museums is a thankless task, and very few try and present exhibits as big as boats, which is a completely different kettle of fish to having bits of pottery in glass cages. A better model for a boat museum would probably be for most of the boats to be preserved by individuals and trusts and on loan to the museum, but shifting to that model is difficult and, as can be seen here, potentially painful with the possible loss of items.

Isn't that the motorway bridge (or similar modern road infrastructure?) There was a period in the 60's when we were lucky to get bridges at all on some canals, and in one or two cases like the Lancaster the luck ran out

If we assume that the hay was always a backload to minimise empty passages, and (say) 20 tonnes a boat load for manure then it's still 31 passages through the lock each way - not a lot, but significantly more than nothing!

I remember Convoy - saw the film at the Regent Cinema in Marple, and at school we all knew the song ~(and the alternative "Convoy UK") However, until now, I had no idea what "A cab over Pete with a reefer on" meant! You have enriched my trivia knowledge, although I can't honestly say that last 45 years have been barren and lost to the wilderness not knowing this.

Thank you! A good point well made! Too many people who rave about how good technology is are geeks who enjoy using it, an awful lot of us regard it as necessary but not exactly a pleasure. what3words LOOKS and FEELS easy, and doesn't need me to be particularly organised. I can remember a sequence of words several weeks later, by which time I'll have forgotten the code, lost the bit of paper I wrote it on, and the link I downloaded will be way down the cache in my phones memory

We need a definitive source as there is a further change to be considered - as originally built the Oxford Canal went through the bridge and towards Naption, but with the straigtening that became a dead end and both Napton and Hillmorton lie behind the photographer, so in theory from that date onwards the stop lock COULD have seperated the waters of the two canals Now I've checked the Oxford Canal rather than the Grand Junction in Bradshaws, the stop lock is listed as being the end of the Braunston Branch, although it's only listed in the mileage tables not in the locks

In that case, one wonders what the heck it was for!?!? Was it just a toll and gauge point?

That is surely the comic version of the Cheval Electrique? A kind of French Ivor the Engine?

I've done a little bit of research and trawled my own memory banks - a cursory check finds 12 stop locks which had to be used as locks even though they had minimal change of level. Of these three went up to the older canal (or more precisely, the canal being joined), five went down to it, and four could work either way. I haven't included some notional ones as I'm not clear they ever had a change of level, included in these are Marple, Horsley Fields and Worcester Bar, all have gate recesses but I've no record of them ever being used, One issue is that Bradshaws 1904 isn't 100% reliable - Barnsley Junction and Langley Mill stop locks are both listed but Braunston is not for example, even though Braunston did act as a stop-valve so the GJCCo could pump their own water back, also some stop locks were redundant by 1904 (Marple for example) My list is... Autherley SU Preston Brook T&M Hawkesbury Oxford Hall Green Macclesfield Neachells B&WJ Kings Norton Stratford Marston Ashby Warwick Bar Warwick and Birmingham Dundas Coal Barnsley Junction Dearne and Dove Langley Mill Nottingham Braunston Grand Junction

It's a quote from the webpage, which seems to have been written by someone who has never seen any other narrow canal except perhaps the Canal du Berry.... (Or the Birmingham and Fazeley, but that's nothing like as exotic!)