Pluto

On the Rochdale, the Act of Parliament specifically states that the lock should be left empty, with both the bottom paddles and gates open. I suspect that the Grantham Act would have a similar paragraph. This ensures the air hole level defines that for the pool above, with any excess water passing through the paddle tunnel and into the chamber. For this to work, the upper gate needs to be slightly higher than the air hole, and the bottom gate slightly higher than that to ensure that it is easy to open the upper gates when the chamber is full. The flooding is a separate matter, as the amount of water passing down the flight will be the same even if there was a bye wash. Again, on the Rochdale, you find overflows built into the towpath, though not on every pool. These allow excess water to drain off the canal into nearby rivers or streams. The air hole is then just required to pass sufficient water to keep the canal full and to compensate for leakage and evaporation, though where there is no overflow in the pool above, they will also pass excess land drainage water, often overtopping the gates.

Not all the locks had the air hole system as it seems to have been abandoned part way through the construction of the canal. A few years ago I had to write a conservation report on the Rochdale paddle gear, so have inspected all the locks to check details of their construction. Not all the pools above locks with air holes have weirs, and these rely upon the air hole acting as a bye wash. The result is water pouring over bottom gates when the chamber and the pool above are full. Should the upper gates be slightly higher than the lower gates, the water level in the pool is then higher than that in the chamber and you end up having to push against a slight head of water when opening the upper gates. This is what happened, and may still be happening, on some of the locks on the Rochdale 9 after restoration. Because the air hole is, in effect, the weir, the top gates need to be slightly higher than the air hole, and to ensure that it is easy to open the top gates when the lock is full, the bottom gates need to be higher than the top. The system was used extensively by Jessop, and I suspect that he did it to keep the lock gates wet so they did not shrink, and to keep the puddle behind the lock walls wet and in good condition. One problem with the system is that it cannot cope with rubbish floating in the canal, and as a result the air holes can become blocked, which could cause the sluices to become blocked and make the lock inoperative.

Only the early Rochdale locks use this system, where an air hole above the ground paddle in effect forms the byewash weir, with water passing through the ground paddle channel into the lock chamber. When the chamber is full, excess pours over the lower gates keeping them damp and thus water tight, presumably one reason for the system. The gate height is important, the lower gate needing to be slightly higher than the upper gate, otherwise it is difficult to open the upper gates when the lock is full. On the Rochdale, the locks in Yorkshire all had this system, as did the first few on the Lancashire side of the summit and those downwards from the Ashton Junction. The other locks in Lancashire were more conventional. Amongst other canals with this system were the Lancaster, including the Johnsons Hillock flight, the Peak Forest and the Basingstoke.

The pool (they never used to be called pounds on the L&LC) above Oddy's Lock drains off overnight, and has done for some time. Presumably BW have not found it too much of a problem, given the small number of boats passing here, and so they have not done anything about it. It is a bit ironic that Bingley, whose water requirements was historically the main difficulty the canal company had in times of water shortage, remains in use. I'm sure there must be some logic somewhere to how they control the water today.... I don't think they can feed the basin above River Lock from the river above the weir, now that Arches Lock has been filled in. Even when it could be used, the water level of the river was slightly below that of the basin, and the canal company had a steam pump here to keep the level up.

Today I found that I have a photocopy of the first two chapters of Pownall's book. I have scanned them and made them into a pdf. You can download it at http://www.mikeclarke.myzen.co.uk/1942%20Pownall%202.pdf

Details about the day-to-day management of canals can be difficult to find. With regard to horses, when the canal company had a carrying fleet, they would also supply the horses. In this case, some canals encouraged a boatman to keep an individual horse, while other canals expected horses to be changed at specific stables along the way. There were also owner boatmen, known as number ones on some narrow canals. These men owned their own boat and horse, and would use stabling provided by pubs or the canal company for overnight accommodation. On Yorkshire waterways there were horse marines, men with a horse who would tow sailing barges on the non-tidal sections of their journey. Horse marines were found on the L&LC as well, where they towed company boats up and down the Lancashire locks, or along the Yorkshire section of the canal.

The pump at Liverpool Locks was only installed in 1934 to compensate for traffic using the locks. By then, there was not so much coal coming down from Wigan, probably around 1 million tons annually, and the canal was beginning to deteriorate. Leakage must have been increasing even then as subsequently the level of the Liverpool Pool was lowered to reduce losses. The pumps would make the canal in Liverpool slightly saline which was a big help in keeping weed down. Pity it doesn't do that today.

Why would you want to keep your dicky cold????

When they purchased the River Douglas Navigation in 1772, the L&LC Company obtained the rights to all water from the River Douglas. They allowed Liverpool Corporation to build Rivington Reservoir in the 1840s, but required a supply equal to ten locks daily to be supplied from Pepper Mill weir in Wigan. This supply enters the canal opposite the junction for the Leigh Branch. A further supply was taken through the regulating lock, linking the canal to the river at Dean. When this was taken out of use, an underground supply was constructed which enters the canal below Appley Locks. Before the river quality improved after the construction of Hoscar water treatment plant, this supply was only used in an emergency as the quality of the water severely damaged anything living n the canal. There was little weed in the Liverpool Pool following Douglas water being used as a supply, so there were some benefits.

Seven of the Rochdale reservoirs were sold to local authorities in 1923, two years after the Rochdale Canal Company ceased carrying. Some compensation water does still come from the various reservoirs which supplied the canal, but not all that much. The L&LC still has all its reservoirs, and when the canal was at its most heavily used supplied water for at least 50,000 boat journeys each year, the canal carrying 2,250,000 tons annually and the average trip being about twenty miles. This is more than ten times the number of trips through locks on the canal today. The water shortage on the canal is caused by excessive leakage, the result of many years of poor maintenance standards. Around 1900, the canal's engineer reported that it was impossible to maintain the canal adequately with less than one man per mile, and his staff at that time numbered over 200. Today, there can only be a tenth of this number. Modern technology has not helped, given the requirements of H&S. Once lock gates could be changed easily in a couple of days. How many weeks does it need today?

The final section about Pownall's scheme in Waterways Journal 1 is as follows: It was envisaged that trains of barges would travel along the system at regular intervals. By using lifts water loss would be kept to a minimum. The size of the canal would be such that any envisaged increase in vessel size would be accommodated, with the waterway 100ft. in width and 17ft. in depth with a clear headroom of 25ft. The lifts would be 250ft. long x 35ft. wide x 14ft. deep, connecting with the existing canals. They would be of a size necessary to handle the vessels using that waterway. It was anticipated that narrow boats and 14ft. barges would continue to be used, but towed in trains. They would be ‘slipped’ like a railway coach when they reached the existing canal that they needed to access, without stopping the tow. A coastal vessel of up to 1500 tons displacement would be able to use the terminal lifts. Consequently, the principal cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester & Bristol would all be linked to the continent by vessels able to move across the sea into the continental waterways. With the lack of constricting structures, the waterways could also be used for transporting “out of gauge” materials, too big for the railways or the road system. It was also proposed that pipes could be laid under the canal to carry liquids and gases, thus improving the transport infrastructure. The canal was also seen as a conduit for water distribution about the country, helping to replenish permeable rocks. By developing underground storage it could be used for town supplies and by agriculture in times of drought.

Pownall's was one of a series of plans to provide a modern canal system in the UK. There is an article in the first issue of Waterways Journal, which should still be available from the Boat Museum Society, which covers a number of these. Pownall's scheme was first suggested by him in the 1935 in an article in Modern Transport, and there are copies of his book in several university libraries. Probably easier to order it through your own library and get it from the British Library.

I would also suggest not mooring within at least 72 feet of a bridge, or anywhere else where a boat could have to stop because of a boat coming the other way. Bear in mind that many boats in reverse gear can be difficult to steer. Also, once stopped in such circumstances, they can be at the mercy of the wind.

In England, the Douglas Navigation as most of it was only in use from 1741 to 1781. However, the canal by the warehouses at Wigan is part of the original navigation, and the Rufford Line from below Rufford Lock to Sollom was also built by the Navigation circa 1760. There is an original navigation weir on the river by Dean Locks dating from 1740, and Sollom Lock dates from 1760c. Are they the oldest navigation structures in their original condition in Britain? There are older waterway sites, but do any original unaltered structures survive on them?

Just before the First World War, over 2 million tons of goods were carried on the L&LC, and around 1.75 million of those were between Liverpool and Wigan. If each boat carried 45 tons, then that works out at 38,888 loaded boats passing through the locks there annually, probably an understatement as some boats would not be fully loaded and many others would be returning empty. Makes you wonder why the L&LC is closed due to water shortage today when none of its locks appear in the 'top 20'.

There would have been numerous boats moored to the towpath in industrial areas, delivering cargoes. The crews of the moored boats would be able to help in passing the line as, unlike today, they would know what was happening, though there is definitely a knack in flicking a tow line over things which can make the operation easier. To see exactly how horse boats passed, get a copy of this http://www.iarecordings.org/friends/sightseen/tpe.html

Using horses to tow boats was one bit of cutting edge technology used on British canals when new. Prior to the 1760s, towage tended to be by man power, with river navigations often having trackways on both banks. Some French waterways still have towpaths on both sides as they were built for towage by humans - it certainly made keeping the boat in the middle of the cut easier.

If its easy to replace, it would also be easy to damage. On wooden gates you do sometimes see fillets set in to the mitre to repair the seal, but they need to be fixed permanently and would cause further damage when being replaced. On the continent, where most gates are iron or steel, they do sometimes have rubber seals which can be replaced comparatively easily, one of the few benefits of steel gates compared to wood.

Recently they have also looked at how waterways are funded elsewhere in the world, and also at community involvement and benefit. Apart from a very small staff, they are all volunteers, usually in senior roles elsewhere, or with direct links with waterway users. As volunteers, they don't have much time for communicating widely, but as a group of individuals they do have contacts with many types of waterway users. To me it seemed just the sort of group which will be created to control or advise a waterways body in the third sector. Bit short sighted to disband it then, as it gives out the message that volunteering for senior advisory roles is not valued by government departments.

At least Dave Fletcher had some idea about a future policy for BW, even if you didn't agree with it. I did have some correspondence with Robin Evans about the sale of Greenberfield Lock Cottage, and he bottled out of that. In 2006, I suggested to him that the sale of such properties would make it much more difficult to develop interpretation and visitor centres, which could have been run by volunteers, that the sale would also adversely affect water control, and there would probably be problems with new owners regarding visitors to Greenberfield and with the canal heritage environment. All of the points I made to him have proved correct, but at the time he would not continue any discussion about the sale. It would seem that he did not - and still does not - have a clear idea where BW were going so could not deal with any criticism. This would, of course, make it impossible for him to deal with cuts from DEFRA.

IWAC is/was one of the cheapest of the DEFRA Quangos, costing, so I have been told, less than £200,000 per annum, including staff, rent for office space, and the expenses of those attending meetings. It seems, in government terms, a very small amount compared to many other quangos, especially as it was one of the few ways independent people could comment on what was happening to our waterway system. I suspect there was pressure on DEFRA from some of the waterway authorities whose work has been criticised by IWAC.

The bottom is the important seal as the two mitres need to meet flush together as well as thew gate sealing on the cill. If the top meets first, the bottom of the gate will not necessarily meet to form a good seal. The poor mitre seal is certainly the result of narrow boats using wide locks, but a bit of simple routine maintenance would avoid excessive leakage, and that is what is not happening.