magpie patrick
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Posts posted by magpie patrick
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Given the innovation was noted in 1795, and a lot of canals were built after that, it would appear sloping paddles didn't offer enough of an advantage to outweigh any disadvantage.
7 hours ago, Stroudwater1 said:Diggles paddles are very angled aren’t they? Are they the only top ground paddle mechanisms that are both on the same side, and also the only ones that face into the canal?
that means winding them standing sideways to the canal, and not facing the canal as they are wound?
Longford Lock, Staffs and worcs tonight
and Diggle from above
I can't think of any other UK canal that has two paddles on the same side, although the original configuration at the lower end of each lock at Marple did.
I've seen a USA waterway with three paddles on the same side, operating a valve in the floor.
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Scot II, turning above Muirtown Locks in Inverness, August 1978. A converted ice breaker running trips through Dochgaroch to Loch Ness
Apologies - photo of a glass covered photo (original taken by dad when we were on holiday)
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We're planning to visit in August. Ness (for that is my partner's name!) Has never been and its over 40 years since I last saw the canal. I was sad (but not entirely surprised) to find that Scot II is no longer operating trips from Inverness. I also recall a very impressive boat called "Gatelifter" that was designed for exactly that task - lifting lock gates.
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Dating these things is difficult, and it's interesting that Maillard observed this in 1795. From memory there aren't that many with a pronounced slant, and the ones I particularly remember are on the HNC at Diggle, although from memory a couple of other HNC locks (Uppermill?) also some Trent & Mersey locks. That said those look like they're falling over, but some may have a much less pronounced slope.
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Been clearing out the loft at the ancestral Castle and found this. Of particular personal interest as the first boat holidays I recall were on Joanna, although I recall Magpie the Elder saying many years later that the family used to squeeze five onto one of the others, with me and @1st ade sharing one berth head to toe: we'd be about 2 and 5 at the time.
I'm aware others are also interested in the history of leisure boating and hire boats.
And finally - some customers must have been quite ambitious in their cruising plans judging by this paragraph!
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30 minutes ago, Hudds Lad said:
The grant received from the Millenium Commission was £12,840,000, they originally offered £15,000,000 but English Partnerships whittled this down.
That makes sense on the basis that MC money was capped at 50%* (HLF could be up to 75%) and EP was the bulk of the match funding, so with £12,840,000 from other sources MC would be capped at the same amount
*unless you were proposing a fancy dome in Greenwich, in which case the sky was the limit!
Pasted out of XL, a quick analysis of the Frankael list - red is navigable remainder waterway now
Some of the BCN length have now been transferred out of BW/CRT, and some isn't navigable. but I haven't corrected the figure
Canal Notes Status Length (km) Ashton Now cruiseway BCN Except NML, B&F and to Delph Not all navigable, some now transferred 122* B&T Not connected 23 Caldon Now cruiseway Chesterfield Transferred out of CRT (Part) Cromford Not navigable Erewash Part Cruiseway GUC closed branches Transferred out of CRT (Part) Grantham Not navigable HNC Grant aided restoration 27 K&A Now cruiseway Lancaster Not navigable Leeds and Liverpool West of Aintree only 17 MBBC Not navigable Mon & Brec Now cruiseway Nottingham Not navigable Oxford Old loops Not navigable Peak Forest Now cruiseway Pocklington Part navigable - not connected St Helens Transferred out of CRT SSYN Sheffield Canal only Now cruiseway Shropshire Union closed branches Transferred our of CRT Swansea Not navigable F&C Scotland Monkland Scotland Union Scotland
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28 minutes ago, IanD said:
Do you know roughly how big the EP and Millennium grants were for the Rochdale and HNC, which it seems would have to be paid back (about 70% but more probably 120% with interest) if they were closed?
Total funding for the Rochdale was £24 million or thereabouts, around half from the Millenium Commission, the rest from EP and local authorities. (Remember when local authorities had money?)
I think the HNC was of the order of £30 million
14 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:Section 15 of the Fraenkel Report (20 pages) Reviews the staus of the remainder waterways, costs of maintaing them vs costs of closing them etc etc etc and is a 'good read'.
The summary shows a table of the costs.
From which you have to remove those that aren't navigable, or are now cruiseway, or in some cases no longer belong to BW/CRT! (St Helens for example)
Edited to add - I will do that at some ppoint but don't have time at the moment
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17 hours ago, IanD said:
So which "remainder waterways" canals does that leave that could be closed to actually save money then?
Further to this,
Remainder waterways that are navigable
BCN other than the New Main Line, the "branch to Black Delph" (connecting with the Stourbridge) and the B&F (all of which are Cruiseway)
Chesterfield Canal west of Morse Lock (which is a restored scheme but I've no idea how it was funded)
Ripon Canal between Bell Furrows Lock and Ripon (again, a restoration since the act)
Wendover Branch
Erewash north of Tamworth Road Bridge
Leeds and Liverpool west of Aintree*
Bridgwater and Taunton
*This is an interesting one, as whilst it wasn't restored as part of the Liverpool Link, the value of the link depends on this length of canal - where that leaves the funding contract issue would keep the lawyers busy I suspect
The Peak Forest and Ashton were upgraded to Cruiseway but a drafting error listed this as from lock 1 at Marple, and thus on a technicality the Marple flight were not upgraded! This error may have been corrected
This list isn't definitive - one problem of course is that the act doesn't list remainder waterways - they are "the remainder" of waterways that aren't on the other two lists
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28 minutes ago, IanD said:
So which "remainder waterways" canals does that leave that could be closed to actually save money then?
Off the top of my head the Northern BCN is remainder and navigable, there are probably others. There aren't that many of them though.
Most of the expensive canals with big structures are cruiseways.
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5 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
If you were responsible for ensuring that the grant terms were met, you would presumably be aware of the grant terms.
Yes, although its some years ago
6 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:Did this include the purchase of land, or simply restoration of the old canal route ?
Grants are normally part of a package, as they match fund each other, so if the project involves land purchase then the grant will be based on land purchase, typically grants where land purchase is required a binding for far longer than if only works are required.
For Droitwich and Cotswold the term was 80 years - this was HLF funding (Cotswold isn't CRT of course)
I seem to recall (but it is now 25 years since I did the work) that Rochdale and Huddersfield were 125 years this was EP funding. Rochdale also got MIllenium Funding which may only have been 80 years (I don't know - not my department on that canal) but because of the package approach to funding CRT can't argue that the bit they're closing wasn't EP funded.
10 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:Who was the grant with ? (the restoration group or C&RT)
Did C&RT accept the grant terms when it was handed over to them ?
Usually the local authority (restoration groups don't have the capacity to handle multi-million pound projects) except Droitwich where it was BW, although curiously they didn't "own" the canal until it was finished.
The scheme could not be transferred without such an agreement, but for everything except the Cotswolds BW were signatories to the grant, even the Rochdale as they were signing the contract to manage it (the canal was leased to the Waterways Trust who were absorbed into CRT anyway).
Grant contracts are complex documents - I've been on both sides arguing about them. They are full of clauses and have very little wriggle room.
None of the waterways is now cruiseway.
10 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:What was the agreed payback for early termination ?
It's not an agreed payback, it's a penalty for breach of contract
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32 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:
The folks saying they cannot do it are guessing that when a canal has been funded by (say) the lottery that there will be conditions as to what can be done with it. No one has yet produced evidence to substantiate that perception.
Let me help you here - I'm one of the folks who works on the grant funding - in the case of two canals (Cotswold & Droitwich) I was the guy handling the money for HLF, and two more (Rochdale and Huddersfield) I had a responsibility for seeing that the restoration was in accordance with the grant terms, which in turn depended on who had given the grant - I was part of a team monitoring for English Partnerships and had to scratch my head very hard when upon abolition of EP the scheme was handed to NWRDA but without enough budget to finish the job. That's one of the reasons the shallows through Miles Platting (?) was only partially excavated - me (and others) deciding that so long as a navigable corridor was created that "would do" for fulfilling the grant purposes.
Grants ALWAYS have a term limitation, as in, the grant contract has a stipulation that the grant purpose must be maintained for a given period once the works are complete. If land purchase is involved in the project, it's usually 80 years. The only way to wriggle out of this would be to argue that, say, navigation wasn't the purpose of the grant but arose as a result of the grant works that are otherwise being maintained - such an approach is unlikely to succeed. The alternative is to pay the grant back - this is on a sliding scale but may also be index linked, so closing a canal 25 years into a grant funded term of 80 years might mean paying 55/80ths back but that would be adjusted for inflation... inflation since 2000 is approx 80%, so closing a canal restored with a grant, before the grant term expires, can be pretty expensive.
BW tried to stop running trips into Standedge Tunnel as they were losing money, but the boats etc were grant funded (this time 30 years) and repaying the grant would cost more than they were losing.-
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11 hours ago, Chris M Jones said:
Could it be the brickworks at Burton Stather on the River Trent?
James W Cook of Hull did operate barges carrying petroleum products on the Trent. One of them was built at Hessle in 1935 named SHEARWATER C.So someone wrote Shearwater C on the back of a photo and this has been interpreted as Shearwater Canal perhaps?
12 hours ago, MtB said:There is an area in Woking, Surrey called Shearwater, and the Basingstoke runs right through it. Main claim to fame is Paul Weller grew up there.
The Basy there is however, only about 30ft wide!
There is a Shearwater near me in Frome, it is a lake about as wide as that in the picture - however it's the water supply for Longleat (or at least it was) and it's doubtful anything bigger than a sailing dinghy has ever set sail on it!
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Have they got "Shearwater " from scrawled handwriting on the back of the photo? If so could it be Stainforth? Or a place starting with S and around 10 letters long?
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2 hours ago, Midnight said:
"So the solution is to make the charge (e.g. £3/night) for every night including the first one. Then a boat without a home mooring would pay £3*365=£1100 per year, at the same time they pay their (similar) CART license fee. Still *much* cheaper than a typical home mooring"
??? 'cos it would be a lot cheaper.
A lot of us keep our boats on long term moorings now even though the towpath is free, so why would we change that? I have to admit thar, on the Kennet & Avon, I'm very happy paying a premium to be on the Coal Canal arm at Dundas where the summer crowds pass me by!
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1 minute ago, Pluto said:
A narrow canal a long way from home.
Austria - Wiener Nuestadt Canal (You have taught me well!)
On 11/04/2024 at 12:42, Heartland said:Now somewhere up norf where there was gas and gaiters
and people left water to run into the sink ?
On 12/04/2024 at 12:55, Heartland said:Yup Tapton Lock, Chesterfield Canal, at least that is what the Waterways Archive states
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Historically known as Ford or Lockoford Lane Lock - Lockoford Lane goes over the bridge at the tail - I think Bradshaws gives both names
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3 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:MAny charities operate in regulated activities where the regulations have statutory force. For example, anyone providing care has to comply with the very extensive conditions set by CSCI (or its predecessors). In neither case do they wholly prevent problems but they do make it a whole lot better.
Any care charity has the option of not providing the care if it can't achieve the standard - CRT don't have that option - they don't just have to meet statutory requirements, they have statutory duties.
10 hours ago, Alan de Enfield said:But without them C&RT would have no accountability.
There is a difference between holding CRT to account and "being on their case" - one frequent FOI user was found to be vexatious and CRT no longer have to comply with their requests.
Those who want CRT to improve (and that's probably most of us) should pick their battles, not just try and make CRT's life difficult.
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1 hour ago, davidwheeler said:
some pictures of my school buses.
I have mant photos of school buses in my university masters dissertation (late 80s) - but they all have wheels! I'd have got better grades with some of these floating ones I think...
1 hour ago, davidwheeler said:Not a lot to do with canals,
Canals in the CWDF context is a generic term for inland waterways and the boats that use them - keep it coming.
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8 minutes ago, Lady M said:Yes, but when they move water is consumed and sometimes the infrastructure is broken. It is a really difficult situation based on a bad law.
"When we use the canals we might damage them, so we're going to stay put and get in the way of people who do want to use them"
Not moving to avoid wear and tear on the system defeats the very point of having a canal system
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3 hours ago, davidwheeler said:
I think my last one was too far off the mark. This one may be completely beyond the range of interest, but you never know.
The year is 1963. The tug is I think Czech since its number starts CSPLO. The coal-carrying barge has the number CSPLO629 I think. Registered in Prague thus perhaps a local coal delivery, but from where I have no idea. The River is the Vltava. The barge is towing an interesting-looking wood tender.
Anybody got any constructive ideas? Otherwise I will pass it on to another site in case that is more appropriate. Anyway, a good looking pair of vessels, do you not agree?. And the building in the very far background is St Vita's Cathedral, where on a Sunday you can hear the most stunning trumpet playing from far above you. Or you could.
Interesting to see that the barge is clearly capable of self propulsion but is using a tug - is that because of the current? Constrained channel?
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A sausage (cooked) - when ascending the Rochdale 9 a few years ago...
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44 minutes ago, Midnight said:I'm also fed up with the CRT apologists. There you go, ......
That's fine - but tell me how your stance will save the canals as the funding dries up.
Personally I feel that the CRT baiters have an irrational grudge, and probably had it against BW. That's why they go for issues like this.
The big battle is to stop canals closing - that might mean doubling the licence fee if no other funds can be found. The nitpicking troupe have not yet come up with a workable answer to this one. All they can bleat is "mismanagement" without explaining how better management would produce the millions needed.
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9 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:Did you read the link and the attachments of the two issues/versions ?
But, as was attached to the link, there were 4 pages redacted from the issue that was given to Board members and that issued by C&RT to 'the public'
Yes I read it - non-story the Daily Mail of the canal world.
I'm also fed up with the CRT baiters in this forum. We're soon going to have a fight for the survival of the canal system and all some people want to do is pick holes whilst the whole edifice (the canals,not those running them) collapses.
There you go, battle line drawn.
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As a consultant I produce reports - there are always a number of versions the client doesn't see. In my case these are numbered upwards from v0 (the first draft) and have reached v7 before the client sees them. The first version the client sees is "draft final" or "final"
NBW are reading far, far too much into the use of the word final.
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On 05/04/2024 at 11:05, BoatinglifeupNorth said:
I don’t see how it would be a hazard going under a bridge as you don’t really do significant turns. Maybe if unattended in a lock it may be an issue and may need removing ?????
I lost the wooden bit of Ripple's tiller at the junction at Hardings Wood Junction, thankfully I wasn't holding it at the time! I was holding further down the bar, ironically because I needed to reach the morse control which was on the left and the tiller needed to be hard right.
That said Ripple had an elliptical counter not a square stern, the tiller was beyond the profile of the stern but would not be beyond the cabin if travelling into a lock.
I'm sure I've seen wide beams with an offset tiller connected to the rudder stock with a bicycle chain arrangement or similar
Caledonian Canal - maintenance craft and other vessels
in History & Heritage
Posted
Thank you @davidwheeler you've wetted my appetite for our summer adventuadventures. I will report back once we've been.