Ian Mac

The other thing that C&RT have to undertake are the 47? statuary obligations which they inherited from when they were a government body. I am not aware of any other charity which has such legal obligations. Anybody know of any? Would be interesting to know just what the 47 obligations are, I suspect someone on here will have the list.

Here is an image from the J.Greenway collection of NB Yeoford & NB Pictor on the Duckhams oil run. You can see the purpose made tanks inside the boats. I am assuming this is taken somewhere on the Wryly, before Birmingham & Midland had a spat with British Waterways and Waterways took their dredger home.

The other problem with Tin boats was they could not carry the same load. This is all to do with the centre of buoyancy and the centre of Mass, The centre of mass has to be below the centre of buoyancy, otherwise it will roll over to get them in the correct place. I believe they are know as a couple as both forces work together. The closer they are to each other the more unstable the craft is, untill they pass each other and then turn turtle in an attempt to sort the problem out Adder was really unstable when loaded. We have replaced that plank twice now. so 37,58, 89 and then again in 2020 as it would have been silly not to do it. May have lasted another 5 to 10 years. Image shows the new wood laid out ready to have the scarf cut on to it before we steam it into place. The last plank to be replaced on that side.

Clayton specialised in carrying any liquids, when they first started they just had open boats, however following a boat overturning on the Thames government pass a law saying all liquids would be carried in enclosed tanks, and thus the tar boat was born. In the 1920's Clayton got a contract to deliver 200tns a week of Saudi light oil from Shell Stanlow to there facilities in Oldbury. This mean at least 10 boats on the job. Sometimes the oil was collected from Shell Trafford Park rather than Stanlow, not sure why that happened. This was stopped after the war when the Pluto pipeline system was slightly deregulated and the oil could be pump down the pipeline and became available from the Kidderminster pumping station, so it became cheaper to road haul it into Oldbury. Claytons other traffics of which people have written was the delivery of liquids from gas works to tar distilleries. This would bring Clayton boats all around the country. There was a southern fleet of wide beams which dealt with the London Gas works. Another oil traffic not sure who ran this one, was bringing petrol up the Seven from Avonmouth to Worcester. Infamous for one of the boats blowing up the Seven Rail Bridge. One thing these boats would do, is to shoot the weirs when the river was in flood. No need for Locks! Pluto only runs down from Stanlow to Avon Mouth then Southampton Water Not sure if the link to the Isle of White is still used. I do not believe it is bidirectional which some of the other lines are.

The thing about all of this is that it does not actually matter in the grand scheme of things. The result of this survey could easily have been predicted. Those that are living on the water because it enables them to have a roof over there heads do not want any increases in cost. Those that have their boat basically as a caravan parked up for 99% of the time and read the papers and know that its getting very expensive for everything but its their holiday home, don't care as long as it does not get too dear. Those in the middle fall either way depending on personal circumstances. What is the biggest cost rise I have seen? The increase in the cost of insurance makes what NBW are moaning on about seem totally irrelevant. The other major cost increase Fuel! Even Wheaton Aston is really dear now As we attempt to do a good bit of boating that really matters. Comparing to 4 years ago.

No No No 8ft Mr Brindley. The standard mantra when working on a 15hp Bolinder. Which is shoehorned into the engine room. It would also make the boatmans cabin on a wooden motorboat so much more accommodating.

This lock is a known Pinch point to those of us with historic craft. The tail bay is falling in, a common failure with W&B locks, many have been rebuilt over the years because of this failure. Once you know what to look for it is quite easy to spot the rebuilds. It has probably moved to the point where normal boats are now getting stuck. C&RT of course will blame almost anything else rather than there own infrastructure. Talking of W&B pinch points I believe the top lock at Taribiggee is also moving and has become a tighter pinch point. The HNBC have been reporting a problem with this lock since 2016! Locks 3 & 10 are also on the move.

The name is far old than that, it was a NEW royal hunting area created by/for William the Conqueror. As royal land it may well have been used to grow more trees when Henry Viii expanded the fleet. To bring it all back to canals the length of canal going east from Ellesmere is lined with Oaks which were planted to supply the canal Co with timber in the future. Can you image the shouting that harvesting them now would generate.

Your taking the meaning of the word forest incorrectly. It is not Forest as in Snow White, or The Ginger bread house, type of forest ie one full of trees, it is Forest as in an area of land reserved by Royals as a hunting area. In Norman times a forest then meant a hunting preserve. Also used by the De-Lacy family, the highest of the Norman Dukes, Norman Williams top mate, who was sent to the north to sort it out after the conquest. A Dukes hunting area technically including the De-Lacy's should have been called Chases - IE Cannock Chase. The Delacys called theirs forests - Forest of Bowland, Forest of Pendle, Forest of Gisburn, Forest of Trawden, Forest of Rossendale. None of these area's have much tree cover and are mainly high moorland, and have been since sheep were introduced to this country millennium's ago. Some of these are still part of the Duchy of Lancaster. Most have a deer park, a fenced enclosure of about 500 acres where deer could be managed. These give rise to names such as Fence, Park Farm etc.

Who actually now controls the basin, was the lease let when the properties were built?

It is!

Unfortunately, no longer complete. When being maintained recently the main drive shattered. Its construction was interesting. The spindle hidden by the white cover was a forged wrought iron shaft. On to this had been cast a cog. Simple story - When being wound up the Cog shattered, resulted in a nasty head injury to the person winding.

That is a really interesting image. I have not seen any photographs of that type of paddle fitted to a Rochdale gate. The earliest ones I've seen all have what I refer to as MKi paddle gearing, some of this still exists on head ground paddles coming over from Yorkshire, all the paddles below Rochdale are either MKii or Mkiii or the dreaded Northwich standard or even worse Fenner. A variant of Mki gearing was fitted to bottom gates, and can be seen in many early images, although MKii does occasionally show up.

Lock gates are a real problem because when they get manufactured incorrectly for what ever reason, the new design "feature" then stays for the next however long, till the gates have to be replaced, then there can be an argument about what is historic! This has been happening since the canals were built, and has created all sort of anomalies, all over the places. In recent times this has been exasperated by the closure of lock gate workshops, we now only have two left, most canals had at least one workshop if not more, and they built the gates, as they saw fit, with rules caulked on the walls in some cases. This has lead to all sorts of messes with look and feel of a canal. For a classic example of how it can go wrong, take a look at the Rochdale canal, which has Northwich style gates as per the Chester canal, L&L style gates as per the Appleby, LL style Northwich gates. Carris Mill style gates, and others! There are no Rochdale gates left as I remember them, however when I started to attempt to justify returning to that design I discovered they where not the original design either. This raises the question of just what is right historically. Should the Ashton gates still be painted Brown & White as I remember them from when I was a kid, or was there another colour scheme before that?. On top of that the listing of the Manchester locks on the Ashton happened so late - 1997 that the listing says they should have steel balance beams, hydraulic paddle gearing and black and white colour scheme. It will take a major shift to get the listing change and the new gate had to have its steel beam repaired and refitted, even though historically its totally wrong in my book. In an attempt to stop this C&RT are attempting to capture what a canals standard gate should be and record it in their CAD system. I am attempting to get these drawing made public. They require this given that they are moving to CNC manufacture of lock gates. The new head gate which have just been install this winter on 'hampton were machined in 47 minutes on a CNC machine, rather than taking 3days to do on the machines currently installed at Bradley. It then took the same 2 days to assemble the gate. Given this the BCNS and the NAG have agreed with C&RT what a standard BCN gate should be, and a set of drawing have been produced. If you would like a copy I will attempt to procure you a set. The best place I think to go for a set of drawing for a new lock chamber would be Tameside Planning Department. They specified what the new locks on the HVNC should be. In particular lock 4W & 6W which are totally new locks built in 1999. They were responsible for specifying the new chambers and having a contractor build them. being a council these drawing will still exist somewhere! They are not as clever as the Perry Bar locks or the original locks on the Droitwich Junction canal which were probably the peak of narrow lock design. Followed by the new locks on the Warwick canals when the GU modernised, however they are broad locks and have some significant differences. I attach a few images of Lock4W Not both top paddle are lineside. The next thing you will need to wrestle with, is from what are you going to make your lock gates. Follow current C&RT convention and build them of crappy French Oak with a life expectancy of about 25 years plus or minus 5 years. Or do as the River Avon Trust had done and make them of steel with a life expectancy of 50 years followed by a refurbish and then another 50 years. C&RT also have steel gates made in the late 1960's / early seventies which are currently being refurbished. There is a pilot project underway within C&RT to investigate swapping to all(well mostly all) steel gates, two locks have already been done one set on the K&A and another set on the River Lee. Even after having people sit by the gates on the K&A there has been very little negative feedback other than the balancing is incorrect, which is due to the wrong Balance beams being fitted ie the old one rather than having new ones which were made to go with the gates, a cost/time decision taken when the two sides of the coin forgot they are connected, a problem all organisations have. Marple locks were originally a great piece of design. When the weir crests were set correctly the locks would self fill before the bywashes kicked in. They had spill weirs for both top and bottom gates, All the gearing was ergonomically laid out, one top ground paddle , which was bigger than those now fitted and then two danny paddles driven off one spindle in the top gate. At the bottom end were a highly gear ground paddle attached to a very small paddle, then a large ground paddle, and lastly a large gate paddle on the far gate. The bottom ground paddles were removed during and post restoration in the mid 70's, the culverts bricked up and two gate paddles installed, made the locks a lot slower. I attach a few images of Marple as it was in the late sixties. The last image 7775 you can just see the three paddle posts at the bottom end right at the bottom of the image.

Got confused wrong units - 10ft box I should have said.

The stove in the illustration of the bow cabin, looks to be a typical bottle stove, complete with draw plate, lots of these were in black country boat day cabins, so I would image they would also be typically used in a bow cabin, as one only needed it to provide heat not cooking. There was one like this on Gifford once of a day, maybe now as well, always say "you do not know!" When we use to boat regularly with Gifford in the mid 70's it had a nice stove in the bow cabin, kept you warm on a cold autumn night. As to having bow cabins, Danny also told me that he preferred to loose a little on tonnage, rather than have all the family, having to live in the back cabin. This continued when he moved over to running a pair with a motor, as he hired a motor man, to run the Bolinder, and the motorman lived on the motor boat. It was not clear if any older boys shared the motor cabin, with said motor man. Keeping a bow cabin butty was true of several families working for Claytons boats. I know of no motor which had a bow cabin, oh perhaps I do! Did Heather Bell have one? But was that not also a pleasure boat before returning to carrying.

I seem to remember that the surviving girl was Maureen Smith, Dannys adopted daughter. However I may have that wrong, I don't know why it just sprung into my mind , when I read the statement. I have recent memory of the tale coming via a different route than Danny relating it to me many years ago. Not sure about front cabin stoves being banned, as its post 1929 when the Public health act was last amended, I may have that wrong too. Maybe it was done a different way, rather than the act.

A suggestion - as well as a verbal location, put a w3w location column. Edited - w3w = What Three Words an app which locates the GPS receiver to a 10m box.

As the mantra goes on NB Spey when working on the Engine "8ft Mr Brindley 8 foot".

I knew I had a picture of Walk Bridge somewhere, NB Spey does not currently fit under it, however we do have a memento somewhere - the piece of concrete we chipped off it. The missing mile, now has planning permission, so it will not be long till we are all racing down there to get up to Stroud.

To Answer the question BS 381C 538 - Cherry is the colour your looking for. Signal Red 537 is the oh shit we bought the wrong one! to be used as an undercoat.

Euston HS2 build has been delayed due to "Bankrupt Britain" The northern leg had go, due to the same problem. It will be interesting to see what else goes in the near future, so they can mortgage the counties future, yet further, to make sure that the Tories do not become the third biggest party in parliament.

I have to report that my father died two weeks ago after a short illness. His funeral is this Tuesday 13th Feb 24 Many may remember him from the WRG NW sales stand at various rallies and events where they purchased their Uncle Joe's Mint Balls, and other valuable merchandise. Or they may remember him for the supply of Broken Biscuits and cups of tea served from his trusty tea Urn on many a working party. The short details are here - https://funeral-notices.co.uk/notice/mccarthy+mbe/5173106 I have attached the article published in our local Rag - The Rossendale Free Press. David MBE.pdf canal legend David.pdf

Hessfords on the Bridgewater near Lymm have a slipway.

As the Bridgewater book says A bridge at Grappenhall - taken in the awful weather yesterday, which was not as bad as predicted so was a good day