Pluto

This MS&LR rain record for 1874 - I found it in the Rochdale Canal records - gives an idea of the area they served.

He went to school in Accrington for a few years when his father was a dentist there. And a couple of my photos to go with this thread - at Nine Elms and York. I liked the smaller LNER locos.

This is an early 1970s photo by Roger Lorenz:

There are numerous ramps for horses to get out on the L&LC, such as this one at Rishton. However, they do tend to be in built up areas where there was a greater chance of a horse being pulled in if the boat they were towing struck a moored boat. In Leeds they were known as 'dog washes', and used for that purpose at the weekend. You can also find numerous ramps on the off side which provide access to the water for livestock. Around 1895-1905, there was a problem with farmers washing their sheep in the canal. A survey was done, and the farmers identified. It was agreed that farmers through whose land the canal passed could use it for washing, whilst the others had to stop. Several thousand sheep were washed annually in the canal at this time. There still seems to be many places where animals can escape from the canal, and any new slopes would just add to the considerable backlog there is with regard to dredging.

We are a bit worried about moving Kennet as we are booked to appear at the Burscough Heritage Weekend on the 22nd, and this follows on from not being able to to Burnley last year because of the water shortage.

You can see the Rochdale crossing the Tib in this map from c1795, at the time the canal was being designed. The Tib passes the end of Bridgewater St and flows up to Garat Lane. The Medlock was navigable at this time up to Garrat, where a tunnel led to a shaft serving a coalyard which would have been just outside the current Picadilly Station. Instead of the deviation canal avoiding Castlefield, there was a culvert under the Bridgewater from the bottom lock on the Rochdale to the stop lock at Hulme. This provided a supply of clean water to the Bridgewater from the Rochdale, and avoided the polluted waters of the Medlock from entering the canal. The bottom lock on the Rochdale was built and controlled by the Bridgewater, and you can still see that it is of differenr construction to those higher up the canal.

It does show that politicians from individual countries can have an effect, and thus affect, the laws of the EU. It just shows how rubbish our politicians were at influencing EU policy democratically, and these are the politicians you want to 'lead' our country?

One of the problems with 'heritage' is that people think of things they remember or were not that far in the past. On canals, that would be traffic in its declining years. On narrow canals, which were less economic then wide, corners were cut, such as reducing the amount of decoration. This was counter-balanced by boatmen taking up the challenge of doing their own painting. On wide canals, such as the L&LC, cargo carrying remained reasonably economic until the 1950s, and the boats, certainly wooden ones, continued to be painted to a high standard, with the graining still being to a high standard. Sam Yates, who did the paining at Whitebirk Dockyard in the 1950s certainly produced high quality graining, as was that in the cabin on my boat, Pluto, which I know was painted, possibly at Wigan, in the early 1950s Looking at early photos of narrow boats, they too seem to have had 'proper' graining. I suspect that the relatively simple graining now used on many narrow boats is just a reflection of the time narrow boat carrying was in the decline..

Throughout the industrial revolution, the French were far in advance of us technologically, and were using calculus decades before British engineers. However, they did not have the necessary appreciation of craft skills and their engineers had problems communicating with craftsmen. Ironically, as technical education developed in the UK from the last half of the 19th century, the same thing started to happen in this country. All education seems to do today is test people's ability to remember things, ignoring their ability to make things. Serving my time, I meet people on the shop floor who were just as intelligent as those I met at university latter, they were just skilled in different ways.

I am not a paint expert, but I think suggesting red lead is purely a primer is wrong. It was certainly used as the final finish on the decks on wooden short boats, and I remember uncovering one of the wrecks sunk on the Douglas/Asland for bank protection on which you could still see some red lead. The boats were sunk between 1900 and 1930, which does suggest it was a very effective paint.

You could always try Barcroft's semi-immersed propellor, though from the report of its use on the L&LC, I would suggest avoiding them. They seem to have worked on the Newry Canal though.

As mill and warehouse building developed in the mid-19th century, destructive tests were made to compare buildings framed wood with those of cast-iron. The former were shown to be superior when it came to surviving fire damage,

Did it change in Napoleonic times? His views on canals were very positive: Canals are the first need of the Republic… There is no palace or building that the Empire needs more than canals and navigable rivers.

Resurrecting an old thread, I just found this drawing of Marple Aqueduct, http://george3.splrarebooks.com/collection/view/TO-THE-GENTLEMEN-OF-THE-PEAK-FOREST-CANAL-COMPANY-This-View-of-the-AQUEDUCT Did packet boats work on the Peak Forest?

With regard to outboard engine installations, I came across this 1960s German photo on http://www.deutschefotothek.de.