Ian Mac

I seem to remember that MAx told me that the image of Spey on the Slip was from 1958. THe yard had renewed all the uxter boards and the second plank. Also note the engine room roof is not attached so I suspect the engine may have been removed for an overhaul. Something it is due again. The other image of NB Spey is post 1976 and pre 1979 as there is only the one water can on the roof. Alf Tolley pained two for us, the one in the image and a black one, which was stolen. It will be interesting to see if the black one eventually appears for sale somewhere!

The only death in a canal I have been involved with, the guy had climbed into the canal and stood there for a long time and had died of Hyperthermia, so sad his wife had recently died and he was heart broken we were told afterwards.

Without getting my screwdriver out the hull does not look too bad, after all it was all new thirty years ago, so most of it should not be dreadful. The cabin is a mess, but then so is ours, however you would need to be fairly skilled or have inside knowledge to know that, as we do constant maintenance (*after a fashion!) The problem here is that a boat is a living thing, whilst it is a boat, and museums and their staff in the main are not about living things, they are about conservation and preservation, that said the BCLM should have a better clue as the have the word Living in the title, and lots of stuff there is in fact modern replicas and working examples, so they should have been better able to couple with a boat. Wooden boats require constant maintenance, a docking and a good coat of looking at every year or so. The BCLM has not done this for a number of reasons, mainly I suspect because the a) could not afford it and b) did not know they had to - back to being in a Museum and how senior staff are trained to think. So they will now need deep pockets, or to choose another path, and make it a static exhibit on the bank, but that will cost too. What I do know is that we have over the last fifty odd years currently spent well less than a quarter of the money that has been expended on Gifford. However we have done the work ourselves, which is were the major cost comes from. Also Gifford has been in a higher standard of presentation than we have, for longer, but we have done considerably more miles. Once of a day we were allowed to play with her, taking her to rallies all over the place. They were magic times. I attach a happy image.

Dyslexia comes in handy sometimes!

I spotted that - it is a piece of canal owned by the trust still, so the standard process happens, when something requires work. Means hope for the future as Derbyshire county most not own it all, beyond Butterley

From what I have seen the request from AWA is to have a length with improved surface which is 84ft long, with bollocks at 6ft, 20ft, 42ft, 64ft, and 78ft from one end of the area, and about 4ft wide. with the B's about a foot away from the edge. As to the dreadful stainless steel taps, I believe they were a reaction to the "new" water regulations which said that any tap were a hose could be connect had to have a double back pressure valve fitted on the supply. This applied to any new or repaired tap. The reverse flow valves available at the time would not fit in the cast iron pedestals so the dangerous steel ones appeared. Hopefully they are now being removed slowly, needs a new boaters rep to get on top of that one!

What an amazing thread! It seems to have taken most of you ages to spot that there is a group of disabled boat users who have grouped together and formed the AWA, and are campaigning for better facilities, good for them. As I understand it they are now looking for corporate sponsorship to get these bollards made & installed at popular mooring sites around the country so that these disabled users can have a slightly easier life. So no cost to Cart. They just have to agree to where these locations should be. They seem to be talking about less than a dozen popular places, where it would be helpful to have them, which I sure you can all rattle off a list. A starter for 10 - Paddington, Gas Street, etc, So there would be one mooring at each location where a registered disabled boater would have priority. Does not seem to be OTT. Disability is a very wide word though, and includes lots of people, most of whom are prepared to make the necessary struggle to have access to canals, as I think this thread proves, and certainly personal experience has demonstrated. I was single handing down Audlem recently with another single hander in front, he was finding it near impossible to work the locks by about 6 down, so I ended up working both him and me down to lock 10 and the town pound, its part of what we do on the canals, help each other. The partially sighted really like canals, but it can be very hard for them in busy areas, such as the two I have mentioned, Blue and Yellow colours really help a lot of those people. Having boated with a wheelchair bound person on a historic boat I can tell you it can be very hard, but we do it by choice. Now can we have some constructive ideas and feedback please, rather than ranting at each other. -- cheers Ian Mac

Of course the Rochdale Canal Company did have a lot of reservoirs at the summit, but they sold them off in 1923 to Rochdale local authority, for public water supply, keeping the right to just a small feed, which is still the case. UU now own those reservoirs, and every now and then they attempt to sell them back to C&RT, who ask for the reservoir report and then correctly say NO, you fix the problems, some of which have now been fixed I believe. So the next time UU look at there books, the trust may acquire them, we can only wait and see. -- cheers Ian Mac

I did not mention Todbrook. The spillway was a modern design undertaken by a friend, and implemented in the mid 70's. The government of the day cost cut the original design. This design was then used on a good many other places, all of which where either in government control or local authority control. It was unfortunate that it was Todbrook which alerted us to the problem, it could have been any one of them which failed under the new weather patterns. The end result is that C&RT along with a lot of utility companies are spend fortunes altering the way Spillways work. As an aside - Our local UU reservoirs have all just had new major spillways. After the last storm, we are now having a new road bridge, as the water from the new spillway has washed the bridge foundations out. C&RT have had to update a large number of Spillways, the one at Harthill has been an even bigger job than Todbrook but not in the news the same. -- cheers Ian Mac

A few things I know. The last litigation centred around a moveable bridge, I believe, was settled out of court for a 7 figure sum. This makes the cost of changing a few lift bridges on the Oxford cheap, especially when you self insure, which most big companies do. (For example the third party/Transport Dept Min excess for my companies company car policy was 4 million, keeps the rates low, but you need good drivers!). It also means that boaters can now operate them safely from the towpath side without the extra cost of building offside landing stages for single handed boaters, who moaned to the ends of the earth and back about them! Plus it gets the Local authorities off the Trust back, who were complaining about the public footpaths not being freely open to all, and making all sorts of legal type threats. The old fashioned Banbury stick and leaping for a chain in these days of Grabit Suite & Run and unlimited H&S fines, make it a very cheap option to install hydraulic pumps. The installation of which has been spread over a number of years, so although the total seems high in the scheme of things it is in the noise, compared to the £6m spent each year on dredging. The breach at Middlewich, involved a lock with all its paddles up, and the local police with C&RT operatives who went to deal with it, having to call out two police armed Response units, by the time it was sort the damage was done. Basically vandalism, or a some would say a suitable case for treatment. There are any number of places around the system where there would be all sorts of problems if the same thing happened. Nantwitch Embankment is a major problem and is being closely monitored, that said all the Telford embankments have been problematic from the very start! As have his cuttings. Dimensions these come from a different age where maximum carrying capacity was all. One of the earliest agreements I can find is that The Trent & Mersey Canal Co, The Birmingham & Fazeley Canal Co, The Coventry and Oxford Canal Co's all agreed that the gauge of their canals would support was Seven and a Quarter Feet by which I take this to mean 7ft 3inches. Of course Parliament became involved when the railways arrived and we have the "Standard Gauge" to avoid this problem, however the did not specify the loading gauge so we have them to thank for being well backwards on our railways there. The dimension of the canals have slowly altered over the years, as cost cutting has occurred. The most recent example being the reduction to 6ft 10" for the Llangollen and the Chesterfield in the late 1960's. Interestingly the last carrying boats BW had built at the end of the 50's were to 6ft10" All the sizes where then made legal by the government and recorded, as a sop I believe to the loss of the right of navigation. (await other historians to correct me here) It is these dimensions which are public now. There are no rules as to what size and shape a boat can be, this has lead to all sorts of problems, of which the most serious in my opinion is overhanging base plates, this happened in days of yor, however they were not outside the box shape of the boat, whereas they are now in a good few cases, and are the widest point on the boat. Recently had to help winch a boat stuck with its base plate out of a HVNC lock. These baseplates are slicing the mitre posts to pieces. If the boat had proper sweep in towards the base plate as historic boats do it would not be a problem, however it does cost more to do this rather than have a slab sided boat. C&RT need construction and use rules, not just width, depth, and length. but tobleholme to cabins and hulls. This may help stop boats knocking hell out of the bridge arches on certain canals, although teaching people how to steer would also help. On width, the standard for any new build on a narrow canal without historic restrictions/problems is 2300mm. There are now volunteers who walk some canals on a regular basis and report into the system, I was helping to do that over 10 years ago. Other volunteers do other important jobs, such as inspect reservoirs for example. There really is no limit, to the tasks a volunteer can undertake, as long as they can be trained properly, and pass the assessments just like a paid employee has to do. For example , one of the most qualified M&E inspectors, is a volunteer, after her retirement for the nuclear industry. However volunteers can choose to stay at home today or when ever, so there have to be enough trained employees to cover all the statutory and essential operational duties, and I would guess that number of staff able to do that, is getting very close to that base number. It is interesting to see that people you would think of as pen pushers are in fact trained to do certain tasks and appear on the weekend rosters, to undertake these tasks. There are also a good many adoption groups and other local groups. Here on the Rochdale, there are groups in Ancoats, Newton Heath, Failsworth - they were out today, Chadderton, Rochdale, and Littleborough, all of whom are making a significant difference. There may be other groups which I do not know about, I'm sure there must be some on the dark side ;). There are also regular volunteer teams out on Tuesdays Wednesdays and Thursdays doing vegetation Management on the Rochdale, more people always welcome, currently based in Failsworth area. PS I like the idea of install a floating pontoon in the A45 bridge to stop the free movement of fat boats on a narrow waterway, it was a real nuisance meeting one, because they would not pull over and we could not due to depth, so just not enough width. Eventually they had to back up to the marina and go in there out of the way again, could have done without that delay, nearly missed the pub! -- Cheers Ian Mac

<RANT> Assisted passages are done mainly these days, by me, and I'm very busy at the moment, attempting to manage the death of my father. I am a volunteer, and I have chosen to help people on the Rochdale, particularly the Manchester 18, because I know how many people find it difficult, and I wish to see the canal used more. It is not a narrow canal and single handing a narrow boat through these broad locks is hard work. It is also not the Grand Union with its little fall locks, nearly all the lock fall more than Denham Deep! Ideally as on any canal you need a team of three to efficiently move a boat with the minimum waste of water. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who are surprised by the Rochdale canal, and the amount of effort it requires. If you know what you are doing and how it works and its little foibles, one can really crack on. I have taken my boat from Ashton to Middleton Junction one day and then the next day on to Todmorden, there were three of us, and we draw well over 3ft, they were not easy days but we did it. Also I have taken other boats the other way in a day. As to the current stoppage on the 18, As the trust has no money due to the erosion of the government Grant by inflation, (was planned I suspect) which in real terms has reduced the available pot by about 20%. This means the trust is in Fix on failure mode, it does not have the resources to do preventative maintenance. This situation has been made far worse, because the rules for reservoirs have change, as a result of Todbrook. This does not just apply to C&RT but also the Water utilities, it is costing a mega fortune to fix them all. The trust can not say they will do them tomorrow the law does not allow that as an option. So ever since Todbrook the trust has been spending tens of millions on reservoirs, each year. Another problem is that the trust is the only charity, which I am aware of, which has statuary duties IE things it must do by law. Providing free towpath access is one of those duties, so towpaths have to come first. The right of navigation was removed over 60 years ago. Changing the CEO will not alter any of this, in fact it will prove to be a very expensive process, as I'm sure you will find out in the not to distant future when Mr Parry decides to step down. Getting a new CEO will be an expensive process, unless you want a muppet to do the job, and you may get one anyway, if care is not taken. The Trust is one of the top 30 charities in the country and CEOs even for charities do not come cheap. The CEO of the Welcome Trust is on well over half a million a year for example. Oh! plus benefits of course. The other thing is the the CEO does not determine what happens it is the board which does that they are called Trustees these days for a charity. One thing of significance which has occurred is that the Chair of the Trustees has recently changed, and this is making a difference David Orr gets that it is all about boats moving. His first formal canal visit was actually to the Rochdale canal in Newton Heath, I know that because I organised that visit. He gets canals. He is also between a rock and a hard place because all the different canal users are fighting each other rather than the true enemy. They all seem to think it is the other users who are the problem, not HMG. If HMG increase its funding to say over 60M a year linked to inflation, it would be a very different picture and the small hole on the offside of lock 67 would probably be already fixed. </RANT> -- cheers IAn MAc

Here are a nice couple of old pictures showing telegram/phone poles going up the Rochdale canal out of Manchester This image is of Lock 80. http://www.gmlives.org.uk/imu/request.php?request=Multimedia&method=fetch&key=68895 from 1899 and this image is of lock 81 http://www.gmlives.org.uk/imu/request.php?request=Multimedia&method=fetch&key=68947 from 1908 However I have a problem the wire and poles appear to be on opposite side of the canal, however they may be swapping side just above lock 81. -- IAn MAc

The primary function of Council is to appoint trustees, they are effectively the shareholders of the company which is the trust, they have £1 shares limited by guarantee. The Council have the power to appoint trustees and fire them all, they can not fire individuals. They also act as a sounding board for the trustees and the executive, however they can not control them. Their powers are very soft. So some of the manifestos were Boris lies, they can not change that which they claim they want to. The elected reps now also have bimonthly informal meetings with the execute, where problems are reported, and feedback is received. That said I have presented several papers to council whilst I have been a member, the last one was a joint paper with Phil Prettyman on the management of heritage, in the widest sense, particularly looking at the fact that detail knowledge is walking out of the door, due to the older staff leaving and the younger staff not staying with the trust. We volunteers have more corporate knowledge sometimes that the trust and this is currently a problem, as this pool of knowledge is not always being used. -- cheers Ian Mac

At the back of the first picture (portrait one) is the lock wall. It is about half way down the offside of the lock and drains into the bywash. It has a decent flow on it when the lock is full. That lock is in good nick otherwise so fills on the bottom gates, with the small leakage through the top gates.

I believe it is well worth asking them.

Its a sodding big hole - will post a foto when I've recovered from being well miffed that a good guy and a person of lower standing got elected to council. It would appear that doing a Boris works!

First of all I'm on the case for them sending out a totally useless stoppage notice. I am fighting to get stoppage notices made for boaters and other users not for internal use. As to the references - a lot of the stoppage notice is auto generated using the details in the C&RT database. The database as I understand it breaks the whole system down into 25m chunks, with structures added in, in high detail so a lock chamber consists of a fore bay, head gates, chamber tail gates, and tail bay. There is huge amount of data in the system, as it does not just cover the structures but also the plants growing, state of the channel, and of the towpath historic structures, neighbours, water inlets and draw off, etc., etc. If you think of it as an excel spread sheet and each 25m section as a row, maybe that will help you envisage it. Then each object within the 1 kilometre length has a sequence number (not necessarily in order!) so RD-017-004 is item 4 in the 17km from the start of the canal, which the system knows is a winding hole. Note, only maintained wnding holes are listed in the C&RT database as such, whereas Nicholson's, etc show a lot of other places where you can turn your boats, as well, which may well be private, or not maintained. Hope that helps. PS it does lead to interesting anomalies in places such as the BCN were the historic names and measurements are used, and not those which we all use, again something I'm attempting to improve. So this is where your help would be useful in this case. The trust had to add the Rochdale into their system when they took it over from the waterways trust, many bits of detail are missing as they did not get the detailed historic records which they have for many other waterways. So for these two winding holes, they will not have names, so just the database identifier has be used. What should they be called. My starter for 10 Up Stream Winding Hole: RD-020-001 - Wallsden Pool WH above lock 29 Down Stream Winding Hole: RD-017-004 - Todmoreden Town WH below lock 19 -- cheers IAn MAc

Interesting that because lock 34 which is the last lock where I had a full on emergency drop everything panic, as the pair of boats caught coming uphill. This may have been because one boat twisted and got caught by the C&H recess overhang or it was too narrow, either way I was amazed just how fast it all went wrong. Fortunately we recovered and all was well. I agree that the signage needs improving. From Memory I thought the narrow locks were Lock 6 Lock 7 Lock 34 Lock 37 only for historic pairs. ie 2 * 7ft 1" Lock 40 Lock 41 Lock 47 I am not aware of any limit on width which is less than 13ft other than the Rodwell Tower car park pillar. So think the C&RT guy was talking out of his hat.

Well that has given me something to raise with the senior management when I talk to them next. Just out of interest, so I can ensure get the exocet missile launched in the correct direction which team leader, as there are two! One for Yorkshire and one for Lancashire.

In days of yor, we use to moor either by the road bridge in the middle or at Finsley Gate and then nip down to the Miners Club for Benny & mild. Use to be an excellent club. Still there yet. -- Cheers IAn MAc

The cost of managing a closed canal is almost the same as managing an open one, on a day a to day basis. We know all these numbers from when we were campaigning in the 1960's, and with hindsight, we under estimated the costs of closure, particularly in built up area's. We are not talking about virtual payback blue green corridors have here but had currency. The Bentley canal has already been mentioned, and is a classic example. I can remember a party coming from the local council there, to see the Rochdale water channelling, Manchester also showed them the re-openned Ashton Canal and said this was by far the cheaper option. However they opted for the most expensive option of total elimination. This ended up costing a mega fortune, and the pay back that was claimed for the possible land sales, never happened as predicted, as a quick look at Google maps will confirm, because one can not easily build on top of the pipe which had to be installed to replace the canal. So you can still see the route of the old canal (the pipeline culvert) being open land. It is built over in a couple of places, but this meant lots of additional cost for the developer, far cheaper to leave a gap normally. It is a shame they did not go for the water channel solution because this is what saved the Rochdale canal as it meant that the route did not get built on in Manchester. The only significant loss to buildings, was the Mega Co-op built on the line in Failsworth, and the loss of various short lengths to road re-alignments and builds. -- cheers Ian Mac

Having moved it, its horribly unstable side to side. You could make it a bit better with a load of ballast, I suspect, but given the length, and therefore the number of people that could be on it at one time - think walking groups!. I think the spud legs are not to bad an idea. Remember the millennium bridge wobble. -- cheers IAn MAc

However I believe the sides are not vertical, but canted outwards towards the top, so that the bottom boards which over hung the sides, were still inside the virtual square sided box shape from the gunnel down, and then across the bottom. Now I just have to find a wooden Hampton boat to prove that.

I have never heard of a expression "1/4 chine" before on a narrow boat. That said, it could mean that the bottom quarter of the side plate is bent inwards to some degree. Most narrow boats have flat bottoms, which is where a sea going boats chines are. If it is referencing the side plates it would then enable the base plate to conform to the standard, that it should not protrude past a vertical dropped from the side plate. Many narrow boats do not obey this rule, and are ripping the fabric of the canal to bits. The damage to lock gates is really noticeable. I think the rule may only exists for new builds. The rules of what is a legal boat on the canal is a legal nightmare, especially as each jurisdiction have different set I believe.

As the land agent from Transco told me "the ownership in that area is the ultimate nightmare". Just to the north a fully euro spec roadbridge had to be installed, at vast additional expense, during restoration, at the adjoining landowners insistence. Originally the crossing here was a lift bridge, which gave access to the towpath on the Heywood arm as its main purpose. I believe he had improved this by some dubious means, when the motorways was built and thus was able to claim he had an unimpeded right of access to his land, which historically it never had, from the Manchester Rd side. The route under the motorway that the canal now takes was originally provided to provide an access for the farm on the south side and to the east of the original canal line. I do not know the history of what happened here, but the farmer was very upset by the changes, and as I understand it ended up getting a custodial sentence for criminal damage to the new canal and lock. This problem or whatever, seems to be still simmering away. Due to this and practicality, a minimum of two people are required to move the pontoon out from under the motorway. I have helped do this once. It is not a regular event. There is no reason why a pair of trained volunteers could not do this task. However there are not that many volunteer lock keepers on the west side. To move the pontoon you need a van, because you have to go to the depot (Grove Rd on the HVNC) to get the power pack, and a trolley/wheel barrow to move it. The power pack is a petrol? engined powered hydraulic pump, a set of hoses, and a control lever. You use it to lift the legs of the pontoon one at a time. On arrival you go to the south end and erect a towpath closed sign with diversion route, which means the towpath users will have to walk up to the main road and then under the motorway and back down another track back to the towpath,there is no other route, I am aware of. One then goes to the north of the motorway, erect another closure sign there , unload the power pack and wheel it down to the pontoon, close the gates detach the pontoon, lift the legs and then pull it out of the way, into its layby, let the boat through, get it back into place (this is harder) drop its legs and lift it into place, attach it, open the gates, reload the power pack into the van, an uphill task, remove the diversion signs and retreat to Grove Rd, to drop off the power pack. Takes about three and a half hours approx. It is normal practice not to start till you can see the white of the eyes of the broad beam boater. There are all sorts of stories and myths of the team moving the pontoon, and then discovering the wide beam broken down in the lock above, etc, etc So now they have to be there waiting when you arrive otherwise, its a no show and you go get on with something else - normally clearing yet another poorly designed by-wash grid. -- cheers Ian Mac edited in an attempt to fix my dyslexia