billh

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.

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.

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.😀

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.

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?

Yes but: what would you give for a starter battery that can crank that 50's V16 over for several minutes at a time ? I think the battery is 110v on these but the cranking current will still be huge, maybe they have a heavy duty shore line! These EE diesel engines have no cold start accessories as they were rarely switched off for long periods. In the present day preservation era, cold starts are a more regular occurrence , hence the display in the vid. Also, in BR days they didn't use anti-freeze in the cooling system.

We used the lift in 1977, cost of passage was £6.50, probably quite expensive then. It was operated by one bloke in the cabin above the lift, no attendants shouting orders or office staff. We went onto the River for a couple of days and then came back up ( might have paid again ,I can't remember) . Nobody died, simple times. The nearest computer was probably the process controller in the ICI works opposite. Thinking about it, I went on the boat "Lapwing"(?) on a school trip from Weston Point to Preston Brook , might have been 1968 with a single passage of the lift.

I bet washing soda is now not as strong as it was 90 years ago when that was written into the instruction book! There's a Company down the canal from here, East Lancashire Chemical Co, still make and export washing soda ( Elco brand, geddit?) all over the world, been doing that since the early 1900's. I've used WS in an electrolytic cleaning tank for, amongst other things, Kelvin engine parts, it works well.

I fitted 5 of those "Brammer" belts on the motor drive to a Herbert Capstan lathe, seems to work ok with its 7.5HP motor. Oddly enough there was no adjustment for ordinary V belts, so these link removable types were a better(and cheaper) option.

I know of a very solid Bingley Marine boat, 35ft 1976 build. A survey , around 5 years ago, reported an excellent hull. The Lister ST2 engine is original fitting and has never had any work done beyond routine service and oil changes. Not a shapely hull design but it has certainly stood the test of time. ETA: I have known the boat from new- it's had many different paint schemes and several names.

101112E is Prince's Dock, Guide Bridge , Ashton Canal , late 70s . Grosvenor Mill in the background. 100254E, in case not mentioned, probably South Tynedale Railway , loco is a much modified Hibberd and first STR loco to operate at Haltwhistle. Loco still exists but not been in working order for many years. 101107E, Frigate, part of Royal Navy canal fleet, 1 of 4 vessels built 1972/74 by John Pinder for Navy recruitment inland. Location unknown.

Rocket Ronnie, the lock keeper used to live there😃

Are stop planks still used by C&RT? Their preferred method these days seems to be the scaffold frame and plastic sheet dam method, installed at great expense. I suspect an H& S issue , not knowing the structural integrity of soft wood stop planks, stored under less than ideal conditions,sometimes for years. Staff working on the "dry" side of a set of dodgy planks may be in danger? Also, the problem of all sets of planks have to be custom made for a particular location, different widths at the stop plank slots, two sets for a lock plus numerous bridges and special narrows usually at the ends of an embankment. Would you trust the planks shown in the picture?

Surely the main feed SHOULD be from Rudyard Lake via the Caldon Canal? Anything coming from the Macc will be small by comparison. I understand that Rudyard cannot supply too much as affects yachts/ fish/bathers/water sports, blah blah.Us NBers will just have to put up and shut up.

Isn't the Rochdale closed at the moment? Problem at Princess St lock ongoing for 2 weeks now with a further 2weeks for repair. I am not sure I would describe that as something nice on the waterways ( but great pictures!)

I maybe wrong, but I think there were 2 through trains each way per day. Perhaps only one was named? One of them arrived in Colne in the evening. I do remember seeing the destination roof boards on the carriages( "London Euston-Colne".At the time I didn't know where Colne was! David's comment about the loco is interesting , I recall it was usually a Stanier 5MT but sometimes a Jubilee. I am either very old or was a newbie trainspotter at the time. The line closed in 1968, the bridge was demolished mid 70s, a house built on the left bridge abutment and some fool built the M60 across the canal here creating a new tunnel with lighting that hasn't worked for years.

Goliath's mate is quite correct, congratulations! The railway in the picture must be one of very few built as a result of a new canal under construction but resulted in the London and North Western Railway getting their corporate fingers burnt. The story goes like this: The Manchester Ship Canal planned its new docks ,actually in Salford and needed the site of the existing Manchester Race Course for part of the dock area. There was some discussion as to where the race course would be re-located. One of the favoured sites was to be in Audenshaw several hundred yards to the north and east of our picture (we are looking more or less due east). Based on this, the LNWR built the line from Ashton Moss Junction (just to the south of our photo) to Droylsden Station Junction, a mile or so to the North . A station was built (Audenshaw)to serve the proposed racing venue, at the time there was little housing in the area and the large Ashton Moss Colliery site. The racecouse was actually relocated to a site next to the River Irwell, still in Salford . The Audenshaw Station closed in 1919 and never had any significant traffic. The only regular passenger service , certainly in later years was the named train (The Lancastrian) which ran between london Euston and Manchester London Road with coaches detached at Stockport for the Lancashire textile mill towns and terminating at Colne. This was to allow the textile mill owners to conduct business in the Metrolopse and get back home for dinner. Of interest , but not in our picture, just below where the photographer is, are the two large pipes making up the Haweswater Aqueduct bringing Manchester's water from the Lake district, 100 miles or so ,by gravity. The pipes are under the canal here , but can be seen overhead , crossing the Rochdale Canal in Failsworth. Also worth mentioning, the bridge in the distance, GRoby Road, had 4 levels to it: The road itself, now demolished , the railway from Denton Junction to Crowthorn Junction, the Ashton Canal and finally beneath the towpath and through the bridge , the Nico Ditch, slightly diverted . This last was part of an ancient Saxon (?) defence works stretching from East to south Manchester, reputed to have been built in a couple of days to stop a Norman invasion several centuries ago. Goliath's map link just about shows the location at the extreme left of the map . The extensive railway system around Guide Bridge is notable. Anyone still awake? Bill .

None of the Heatons around Manchester or Stockport (Heatons Mersey,Norris,Moor,Park) have a canal . I think it's the name of the photographer!

Where's this? Taken about 1960, the train is a portion of an express from London. Neither of the two bridges shown exist now. The pole on the towpath was part of a Rediffusion cable TV route.

Nope. Try 1955, YC and YD are "modern" 😀 Rustons. For WW2 era, VR,VS and VT for NB sizes .

There was a similar winch at the tail of the bottom Hulme lock in Manchester. The lock was at right angles to the river Irwell and the winch was used to haul boats out of the lock and into the Irwell stream where a tug would pick up the tow for the journey into Manchester docks. On one occasion , the lock staff were over enthusiastic with the winching and fired a loaded wooden narrowboat at great speed into the opposite bank of the river with such force that the stem was burst and the boat sank. Compensation set in and the MSCC had pay for recovery and repair of the casualty.

If The Daniel Adamson is a white elephant, give me a herd of them. A superb vessel, I encourage anyone to take a trip on her as one of your bucket list things to do. No Glennifers to be seen or heard, are you thinking of that Massey Shaw fire fighting boat on the Thames?

Saltisford Arm Trust

I recently mentioned in another thread , the original trip boat at Uppermill on the Huddersfield Narrow & Shallow Canal. This had the Hotchkiss system, quite suited to that location at the time, 20 to 25 years ago. I remember it being slow and not very steerable. The boat as I recall .was 70ft long and may have been an iron Joey from the midlands. It was called Moonraker, a reference to the traditional story of locals attempting to recover the Moon from the canal! It was replaced by a conventional boat and sold , I think, to the organization that restored the canal arm (near Warwick?) that I can't remember the name of right now where they used it as a trip boat for some years. It may have had a wooden bottom which could explain it becoming derelict.

I find that hard to believe in the case of Network Rail at least. They must still own large tracts of land at the old Marsden goods yard and at Diggle Junction. They have a continuous maintenance and inspection requirement for their 3 tunnels.In addition there is long awaited work towards the Transpennine Route Upgrade and eventual electrification of the route. It is possible that NR are trying to limit C&RTs access to enable this. I do not see why the canal tunnel could not have some kind of comms system along its length for boater use, similar to what used to be in coal mines(remember them?) and do away with the shadowing van altogether. Has there ever been an incident where the van and man have been necessary for a rescue? There has been some discussion that NR may want to re-instate the van & man tunnel as a live railway line, possibly only while the main double track tunnel is electrified, that would mean an end to C&RTs present methods.