Laurence Hogg

be Ed Mortimer (Ed M) has obviously got a lot of information on this hull and yet seems to be sharing only part of it with us in the attempt to discover the identity. Surely a couple or more pictures showing the vital details will assist in the quest and must be available, so come on ED, come clean and show us the goods properly. You might learn a lot more.

That boat I believe was the ex Mersey Weaver horse / butty boat "Aston". It was part of the "Hostelcraft" fleet with "Pamela". Several pictures exist showing in some cases LMS "Station" boats and other Joey types fitted with outboard engines. These I believe were early "Evinrude" types and were used on the BCN and nearby waterways. Given Peter's information this may be the type of craft "Margaret" was. A cheap "Make it go" solution to wanting a motor boat. In 1969 I photographed this boat on the T&M it had a engine inside the boatmans cabin but motored very well.

This boat is almost certainly one of the second hand FMC motors used as motor joeys / tugs on the BCN. It is listed as a proper living cabin boat and the dimensions are more likely to be FMC rather than GUCCCo as the originating source. It is listed as going onto the "SWD" (very likely South Western Division of BW).

And what on earth is a "Woolwich Star Class Trader Replica" supposed to be? is it a large Woolwich, Small Woolwich based or someones play on modern nicknames with no knowledge of the real thing (a Star Class Trader doesnt exist in any historical context!).

I have just realized I have mistaken Banbury Merton St for the station at Rickmansworth so please ignore the above request re 0-40 tank, it was at Banbury!

I seem to remember walking up to this station in the 70's and finding a very overgrown scrapyard nearby which contained a 0-4-0 tank in derelict condition. Does anyone else recall this? I did take a picture but cannot find it!

Three more shots of the last runs taken by myself in 1972:

Two swing bridges are now missing according to the map.

That's the 1949 motor "Malvern", I doubt it ever carried FMC livery being delivered into the changing world of nationalisation, she is also deeper than conventional predecessors being more akin to a small Grand Union motor in capacity. The other "Malvern" was a horse boat built late 1920's with a forecabin, long time converted as seen below in 1978 Keays dock:

The paint probably came away as the can if new hadn't been degreased. An awful lot of cans have been painted without primer and somehow I find it hard to hear the likes of Jess Owen shouting "Joe get us a tin of self primer" when your at t bookies". as he sat grinding up te ingredients for the latest "Sam Barlows green".!!!

None went to any of the flashes as far as I know. One belated sinking occurred in the Middlewich flash just south of Billings green but the boat had by then been converted and in private ownership.

I find this the latest bemusing twist to the horror story associated with this collection. £300,000 + is going to get spread very thinly over 11 boats particularly given the way CRT slosh the money up the wall. It amounts to £27k per boat. Now in the hands of a diligent private owner or group that will do a fair job on a metal boat but will go nowhere on a wrecked wooden craft. This is a nice way to wrap up "Scrapping" in decent cloth's, "Deconstruction" means just that, boats have been deconstructed elsewhere and remain so. Laser scanning is fine as long as it remains accessible and doesn't get lost. A proper set of drawings would be more useful in many ways. Oh well, its been a long time coming but I guess this has always been the ultimate end for this collection.

The Narrow Boat programme was funded by BBC East Midlands and was part of the work of the "Inside out" team. They had loads of information and only used a small part in the programme, it wouldn't surprise me if a more lengthy programme is produced at a later date. Their interest in Harefield was good too and comments were passed that this in itself could form a programme basis. In all for its 30 minute slot I thought it was well edited and presented with the majority of facts correct, indeed they went to some length to ensure facts were true and not heresay.

The boat to my eyes is a "Wych" barge built at Droitwich, does this offer any clues?

Hi Ray, Last sighting known of her was on the Eastern end of the K&A in 1993 ish. She is not "Almghty" which belonged to Chris Pink, that boat was sold on and ended its days sunk on the Avon.

Whilst we know the future is good for "Lucy" where on earth has "Neptune" disappeared to? No recent sightings of this motor for over 20 odd years and back then it was in excellent order, so where did it go?

Having been involved in the narrow boat part of this series, I was duly impressed with the attention to detail and the demand to get facts right or as near correct as is possible. I do hope the same diligence has been used for the other chapters. Well done BBC.

The early batch of H&W motor boats have the greater sweep as do the first small Ricky motors.

As the company address is different it is obviously an amended later reprint.

From my understanding "Arteries of commerce" was produced prior to the British Industry Exhibition of 1934 where Grand Union exhibited, they had a large canal model built by Bassett Lowke of Northampton (who advertise in the book). A notable absentee in the advertisers is W J Yarwoods, almost every other firm associated with the modernisation has an advert.

That's been done using the curved stencils I wrote about earlier, they chalk marked the letters with them and then sign wrote, obviously in this case with brain out of gear!!

Were they? I think not. A curved stencil guide was used for "British Waterways" based on a GUCCCo cabin side which is why on some boats (FMC) it looks wrong. The house emblem was a transfer both in DIWE and BTC/BW cases. Bulls Bridge had a resident sign writer as did other depots. Transfers were used later on for the castle panels and some rose clusters but that was in the late 1950's for River class boats. As an aside Bradley used stencils for all their lettering right through until the later light blue BW livery.

The picture is of the layout built for Grand Union. I understand in the early 1970's that this still existed, very likely at Bulls Bridge. I am not sure if the model of "Progress" came from it that resides (or did) in Stoke Bruerne. Also in Stoke was a very accurate but incorrectly named GU motor model. BL built these types of models for many industrial manufacturers and today they are worth a lot of money.

Nothing in the CRT archive I know of other than the copy I gave them of the notebook (probably lost now). I think the dimensions are external There is still a stem iron on "Silver Jubilee" and the "Rose" near to Keays.l "Rose" although gone at the waterline is still extant in the mud.

The Anderton Company dock notebook says 3ft 6" as rake for stem, other dimensions given too.