alan_fincher

I think you have the right Mary. It seems she was Doctor Mary Gibby OBE. I really had no idea!

I agree that many historic narrow boat sales seem to be by word of mouth, rather than advertising publicly. As suggested some potential vendors maybe keep contact details for people who have expressed an interest in owning the boat concerned. I obviously never achieved the "canal cred" to make it on to any of these "preferred buyers" lists, so could only ever look to buy boats that were openly advertised - quite a limitation, as I suspect more are "not advertised" than those that are. Both my current historics came via Apollo Duck. Back to the original question though - some unconverted boats in largely working trim do make it on to Apollo Duck, Ebay, etc., though I don't remember many recently. Another approach is to buy a boat with a largely life expired conversion or even a part completed conversion. BRISTOL (aka DIPPER) was an example of the first and OTLEY an example of the second.

I don't think they wanted to sell it before, and I don't believe they do now. What they actually always wanted to do was to pull it down and redevelop the site for housing. Not having been allowed to do that it has been allowed to fall into a state of dereliction, and one can imagine they are hoping for it to fail enough that it is beyond restoration. When it first closed and was put on the market a friend of mine tried to buy it with a plan to put it back into use as a pub. She offered the (then) full asking price, but the vendors showed no interest in accepting it. A shame as my friend is local to the village, and would I feel sure fought hard to make it a successful concern.

Unless you have both an alternator and a starter motor that have both their positive and their negative terminals completely isolated from the bodies of the alternator and the starter motor, then your engine will have a connection between battery negative and the engine itself, because the alternator or starter battery is connected to negative, and so in turn to the bodies of this equipment and so in turn to the engine itself. You can get special marine alternators where both terminals are isolated from the device, but these are rare in canal applications, and I would suggest it is highly unlikely that a 30 year old Thorneycroft T90 would be so equipped. From my understanding far from trying to mount your engine on insulating feet, (and you would need to do the same for prop-shaft, exhaust, etc.), what you actually need is a negative lead direct from engine casing to battery negative. Perhaps there is some nuance here I'm missing? If so, I'm sure someone can quickly put me right.

Excellent - thank you!

I have two boats, each fitted with a Lister HA2. It turns out that whilst the Fuel Lift Pumps on each looks similar, the way the inlet and outlet ports are orientated on each are in fact different. One looks like this, and is, I suspect the way they normally are:- The other looks like this.... I suspect this to be the non standard one - not the least because having paid a lot for the engine involved, it has proven fairly problematic in my ownership, and quite a number of non standard hacks have come to light. I now want to replace this pump, but all the examples I can see on pages for Lister parts suppliers, or on eBay look to have the ports positioned as per the first image, and not like this one. However it looks to me if one were to release the 5 screws that clamp the upper and lower parts of the pump body together, it should be possible to rotate the top through one fifth of a full turn and clamp it back together, with the ports now aligned as per the second picture. Does anybody have knowledge of this please. In particular can the two parts of the pump be separated, without damaging the diaphragm, which I assume to be trapped between the two halves?

aka "Triagulum". It was owned by a once very well known member of the forum. Is it still?

In the BMC 1800 Handbook I still have an original copy of the recommendation is actually always for a multigrade, (mostly but not exclusively 20W-50). None of the recommended oils for UK temperatures is actually a monograde. When we had a boat with a BMC 1800 we always used a 20W-50.

I would imagine that if looking for a new build from any of the suitable builders you would definitely need to be in no rush. I imagine that most, if not all, will probably have very long lead times.

Round here most B & M vans relate to a care home company. It as, of course, also the Birmingham & Midland canal carrying company, trading out of Gas Street.

2 Bar? 2 Bar?? I can only dream of 2 Bar!

It looks to me like the owner (initials "RH") is associated with Phoenix Canal Carriers on LinkedIn. However I am not signed up to LinkedIn, so can't personally drill down further, but it might be worth you creating a log in?

Personally I would ask Dave Ross who trades (I think!) as DCR boatbuilding on the Stretton arm of the Oxford where Brinklow Boat Services has operated for some years. The best Northwich copies, (they call them "remakes") have always come from that site.. Do you just want the Northwich shape, or do you want rivets (false or otherwise) as well? From memory ARUNDEL probably has none - my preference, unless it is an actual historic, not a copy.

Is that what Collingwood told you?

On the Southern Grand Union canal, the following arms have no locks... Paddington arm Slough Arm Wendover arm None of these are long enough to "continually cruise" on though!

To be clear... Are you saying that 2/3 of this (back) end is original? Or are you saying that 2/3 of the other (front) end is original?

Yes, from memory of the two parts on the dock the bulk of the "straight bit" ended up in the other boat. I think there is very little of it in this one. So the bulk of the rivets will be faked. Not bad looking, though.

Dusty is very approachable. He will also tell you where he has used artist's licence. For example our boat FLAMINGO features paired with BRIGHTON on one of his paintings set at Hawkesbury. He has changed the family aboard to one he knew, and added a dog. Also he has introduced a pair of boats threading it's way between the rows of breasted boats moored on each side of the canal, to make the picture more interesting than if it was just the water. The photograph on which Dusty's painting is based is freely available, so it is very easy to see what in the painting is fact, and what has stemmed from his imagination. We do have his print of FLAMINGO on the walls inside FLAMINGO.

Well the front end looks OK...............

Exactly this!

Ah yes - my apologies. Would that have been the Ellis boiler, or was that something else? Like you I can't immediately remember the name of the wall mounter gas heater. Those thins discharged their combustion gases straight into the cabin, with no attempt to send them outside. It's probably just as well one doesn't come across them any more!

I suppose there are different ways of defining 'proper' working boaters. The last regular commercial long distance narrow boat traffic ceased in late 1970. However there are people who since around about that date have provided constant service of delivering coal and other manufactured solid fuels initially often to canal-side housing, but eventually mostly to boaters. The boating skills that some of these people have built up, in some cases over more than 50 years I would claim must regularly exceed those possessed by the pre 1970s working boaters. A good example is Jules Cook of Jules Fuels fame - one of the best around who steers so precisely and makes it all look so effortless. David Blagrove was indeed a much loved man, who did masses to benefit the canals. He was never anything like as good a boater as Jules though!

Being pedantic they used instantaneous gas water heaters, but these are not actually boilers. They almost always used gas fridges as well. As suggested it was hard to find any hire boat that did not have either a Lister SR2, (2 cylinder about 13HP), or an Lister SR3, (3 cylinder about 20HP). The SR2 made a reasonable attempt at sounding like the bigger Listers used in working boats.

I don't think it's unconverted though. It's an under-cloth conversion, though I seem to recall the structure is wood no steel. The bizarre ploys that the vendor has used trying to sell this boat I am not at all surprised if he hasn't!

Well things didn't quite work out for us either, Ray. Other things going on in our life meant we could't get both boats there, but until the middle of last week we had hoped to attend with just SICKLE. Alas it was not to be, so we ended up there just by car for the Sunday afternoon. I don't know if it was just me, but it felt a poor imitation of Braunston shows of the past. I admit it's not great to pay £20 for half a days parking in a very rough field, and the food we had from the "burger" van was overpriced and downright disgusting, so perhaps I was put into a poor frame of mind before we even got near the boats. I know that by Sunday lunchtimes many "historics" have already departed, but even allowing for that, boat numbers seemed surprisingly low. Please may Alvecote be (much) better - frankly that shouldn't be hard to achieve!