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billh

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Everything posted by billh

  1. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  2. I've taken a 70ft boat into the top lock of the Huddersfield Broad, didn't go down though. 😃. ISTR we had to reverse back to the incinerator to turn as Patrick says. Part of a trip from Ashton to Huddersfield and return twenty odd years ago.
  3. The first LNER maintainance motor boat Joel, was a conversion from a wooden horseboat in 1927: https://collections.canalrivertrust.org.uk/bw192.3.1.31.1.10 The various pictures of Joel in the 1930s show its origins very clearly. The engine was a Kelvin E2 petrol/paraffin engine of 9HP. The boat was scrapped in 1948, as "worn out" and replaced by the present wooden motor taking the same name. ETA: the later Joel was also a conversion from a horseboat possibly Emma no 9 in 1948.
  4. Yes, I know all that. I was pointing out that the railway shunter's pole transferred to a canal use and could also be used as a brake stick, probably with a short life in that application😄 I can see how my original post could be misunderstood,sorry.
  5. The canal to railway use works the other way as well: Shunter's pole, for coupling wagons ( and applying brakes as shown) makes an ideal tool for decluttering props on boats without a new-fangled weed hatch.
  6. A bit of a side issue , if I may ask? We have an A 127 alternator on a slow running engine, V belt running on the flywheel rim, no groove. The alternator runs opposite direction to "normal", that is anti-clockwise looked at from the pulley end and works ok if a little hot at times. I have yet to find the correct rotation fan for this, any ideas for a source? The power demands of the boat are quite modest.
  7. Edith was motorized in 1927, as you say this was before the Kelvin diesels were in production. Kelvins that were available at that time included the new models E, F and G paraffin engines . It occurs to me that possibly 2 x model F4 or 2 x G2 , at about 30 HP each may have been installed? Examples of 2x F4s were in passenger boats on the Thames and the mail boat on Loch Lomond still has them as far as I know. As soon as the K diesels came along they would have offered much better fuel economy but cost of new engines would be a big consideration. Are we sure that a diesel was installed? I cant see some kind of chain drive working reliably with all that torque from a K. How about a hydraulic drive, one pump on the engine, 2 motors for the props? Hydraulics became "a thing" after the its rapid development for aircraft in WW2. And you could put one prop in forward and one in reverse for a sharp turn!
  8. Aye, there's one at Marple right now, Lock 7, probably others on the flight in the near future😟
  9. A very interesting chap. He gave a talk that I attended a couple of years ago, he started as a truck driver for a haulage firm and built up the Manchester Cabins firm later. Have a look at his steam powered Land Rover and interesting things in his garden! A worthy successor to Fred Dibnah with an infectious laugh😃
  10. The railway certainly were in charge of the canal up until nationalisation, the canal staff were answerable to the District Engineer at Guide Bridge Station, I have several items of correspondence between the Canal Inspector (George Lucas) and the DE. The electrification of the route between Guide Bridge and Stalybridge is set to go live (25kV AC) in a month's time. All the gantries on the main line next to the picture have been replaced with new, the original DC wiring only reached Dukinfield Central Station providing a head shunt for the Brookside sidings.The siding alongside the towpath gave rail access to the Prince's Dock about 200 yards away. The last use of this dock was loading 12 tons of coal into NB Joel for distribution to the various lock keepers then resident on the canal.
  11. Location is Pottinger Street Bridge , Ashton Canal. Gartside's Brookside Brewery stood where the new sheds are under construction, the brewery used water drawn from the Jeremy Brook which passes under the canal and railway at this point. The mill in the background was used by Hall & Kay Ltd who were air conditioning and ventilation engineers originally for cotton mills for dust extraction and fire prevention. Building demolished about 1985. Extreme left is an electrification gantry , part of the BR Woodhead system opened in 1954, closed 1981. Interesting is the fact that the vertical part of the gantry was fastened down to the towpath. Ian, I'm guessing the picture is about 1982?
  12. CRT will be notified by the Local Authority when a planning application is made. I realize you need to know beforehand what their take is .
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  14. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  15. I remember seeing one of them being loaded at one of the factories near Stoke, probably 1977. the goods were on trolleys wheeled onto the boat via a short ramp which was hinged I think to the boat and held vertically when under way. The other boat was moored up at the other end of the journey . Much more recently on a visit to the Caldon , the unloading ( ?) point was still extant at the derelict site of the factory.
  16. The dock could be extended using that Smalley 360/5 digger mounted on the ex BW workboat 🙂
  17. This post cannot be displayed because it is in a forum which requires at least 10 posts to view.
  18. Bin there done that! 3VRH,(roughly equal to Lister JP3) light a fire in the bowl , climb on the counterweight, put the huge starting handle through the side , hang on to the provided grab handle with left hand and wind with the right, get it up to about 50 rpm, press the button to release the decompressors and away it goes .Can't do it now, too aged, but we finally fixed the electric start and that always gets it going, usually without any fires. Not bad for a 75 year old engine that's not had an overhaul since 1959.😀
  19. How about if someone "owns" three wooden boats? I think of it as more of a very expensive adoption scheme rather than any sense of owning.🙂
  20. Rochdale Canal onto Ashton Canal ? Wide boats could reach the lower end of Ashton Lock 1 , there was a wide stop lock under the Ducie St bridge, installed so the RCC couldn't get the Ashton's surplus water for nowt. Unfortunately the canal was narrowed here about 20 years ago, for no good reason, so Rochdale size boats can no longer use Whittle's Croft Wharf etc.Note that Store St aqueduct was built wide but maybe reduced width now.
  21. I think active volcanos should be banned. All that smoke, ash and sulphur can't be healthy. Block them up with a nuclear explosion, that'll fix it.
  22. Drax power station is a wood burner. 8000 tonnes a day mostly brought from the US of A. Timber is trucked to a processing plant, made into pellets, railed to a port (Galveston?) put in a ship, brought to UK then railed to Drax. As far as I know, all the transport is diesel powered. More CO2 emissions than when it was coal fired and when a major supplying colliery was within sight of said power station. My Squirrel ,plus everybody else's ,won't ever come near those emission levels even if we burn wet wood retrieved from the canal. Yet we need Drax for when the wind don't blow and the sun don't shine.
  23. link: http://www.fordspecials.co.uk/rochdale.html Co-incidently, there was a grp bodied Rochdale Special in the derelict Ashton Canal for several years before the canal was re-opened. It was a white one , at least when it first appeared there.😀
  24. My guess is they are mooring for a while on the right hand side waiting for a north bound string of boats to come out of the new tunnel. There's a hint of smoke coming out, might that be Bolinder exhaust? Was the battery tug (very on message these days) operational at this period? It's really difficult to get into the new tunnel from a standing start moored on the left.There was a continuous tow path in the tunnel in those days.
  25. More like an Act of God " Thunderbolt and lightning,very very frightening" Good excuse for a stoppage though. Do we remember the helicopter in the Macc Canal some years ago?
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