Ian Mac

Yes you are, its taken a lot of beating up of the contractors, but they have agreed that the canal can be open for 2 one hour periods during the day whilst they are working. I also have heard a rumour that the local authority heritage advisor, has had significant input to the bridge works. Not sure if this is good or bad. Just wish the contractors had not scored a home goal in the first place!. -- Ian Mac

I just happen to have a proper colour chart by my desk. This is the 1948 BS 381C chart which has all the proper colours, like Bold Green & Cherry Red, also this is where Black, White & Aluminium are defined. There are 16 Greys listed at a quick glance. 626 Camouflage Grey 627 Light Aircraft Grey 630 French Grey 631 Light Grey 632 Dark Admiralty Grey 633 RAF Blue/Grey 637 Medium Sea Grey 638 Dark Sea Grey 639 Light Slate Grey 640 Extra Dark Sea Grey 676 Light Weatherwork Grey 677 Dark Weatherwork Grey 692 Smoke Grey 693 Aircraft Grey 694 Dove Grey 697 Light Admiralty Grey The grey used looks fairly close to camouflage grey. -- Cheers Ian Mac

Ohh! look at the colour of the gates - Not Black! -- cheers Ian Mac

I have used it several times, it was slow and hard work, but it had to be done so you could claim to have used it. There were two ways of doing it one as designed by using the paddles, the second way was just to wind the gate up, which worked quite well. This was the method the boatmen used. With todays technology we would have had lots of pictures, I only know of very few. The old boatmen used the old lock alongside, in preference, which was not well maintained, but far quicker. There had been lots of problems around this area with Brine subsidence. It is important to understand that unlike coal subsidence Brine did not attract high levels of compensation. If it had they would have just had a new lock rebuilt. The steel lock was a way they hoped of lowering the cost. However once built the area has not subsided again, so the cost of maintenance became far more than keeping the old lock going, and thus the eventual decision to scrap it. -- Ian Mac

I seem to remember this subject has been discussed before. PLUTO or rather the land part of it from Elllesmere Port (Stanlow) to the Isle of Wight and Shanklin was a huge job, started before the war I think, it then spread out across the country to provide fuel to the main airfields, and became a very complex network. Some of this network ended up with GPSS, so I will have to kill you if I tell you about and other bits a\re now with other companies. We had a lot of problems with PLUTO where it cross the Droitwich canal at the second lock up from the river. It crossed the lock just into the chamber above the bottom gate recess, so it had to be moved to enable restoration of the lock. This was not a big job, but getting the owners to move, took a huge amount of effort, and it was only really near the end of the restoration that it was suddenly re-routed. It was this pipeline which was the demise of the traffic from EP to Brum carried by Thos Claytons. There is a pumping station at Kidderminster and after the war in the 50's this was brought into civil usage and thus made it possible and cheaper to road tanker the fuel into Brum rather than bringing it by boat. If you know what you are looking for its route is fairly easy to discover. As has already been pointed out there is a pumping station at Beeston and you can see the pipe at Whartons Lock. The pumping stations are a standard design and google is good at spotting them. I think most are(were) rail connected. Normally to swap fuels one sends a PIG through the pipe, which separates the different types. It also allows the pipe to be inspected, if they use an intelligent one, rather than a long rubber balloon.

I remember talking to John Clayton of Thos Claytons. He said that they (the company) had a real hard time with the boatmen as they basically took a week to do the round trip to the port with a pair, so although they got an efficiency increase when they bought the motor boats it was nothing like they had hoped for. Back in the late twenties and early thirties boatmen were relatively well off, they all had the state of the art radios, and several sets of batteries to power them. Most people on the bank did not have them at that time. The oil boats and Cadbury boats all used the garage at Wheaton Aston to get their batteries charged, it was the young ones job to take the batteries to the garage and bring back the charged ones. It was also the young ones job to take the bus from Brewood to 'Hampton to collect the horse and walk it down the locks to work the butty up the flight. As for reading & writing, most boat folk could do place names, as they were taught them. I remember Charlie Atkins senior saying about sitting on the roof of the boat with his mother and a slate as they worked 'Hampton locks. He had to write the place names down, which he could see on the coal wagons alongside the cut. Tell his mum where they were. He had an encyclopedic memory about the details of the canal system, even though he had not been down the Welsh cut since well before the war he knew it in great detail. We were starting to campaign to get the Mont restored, and he was telling us where all the bad sections were, the weirs and draw down trunks. Were they loaded and a plethora of other details. I wish I could remember the details he told us, from back then. When he got his own boat he was a rough boater, he said, and ended up in front of the gaffer and was given a right old dressing down, and told to not just improve a bit but a lot otherwise it was the black country for him. This is were you worked from the bank on day boats and the pay was no where near as good.

One archive which I have yet to visit is the Mikron Theatre Archive. They interviewed lots and lots of canal people in the seventies and some of the interviews were recorded. As a theatre company they have no money to make this stuff public, however it is accessible, upon request, I believe, as the achieve is kept by Huddersfield University. -- Cheers IAn MAc Currently scanning slide number 8391 of the John Greenway collection, I estimate about a third so far are canal related. Another 10% are transport related and about 200 interesting signs or shop fronts. Scanning is the easy bit, calalouging them will be the "FUN" bit.

The Hogg photo collection I believe was rescued from a skip, sat in someone's hall for two years and is now with Andy Tidy? The problem is there is not catalogue, just the images, not sure just how much has survived. Remember you can not fall out with people once your dead! Harry's images are all catalogued and Julie his daughter has that and the images, she is still using them. I now have the John Greenway collection of slides approx 11K images, of which approx a quarter are canal images, maybe, currently have scanned over 2k5 canal images. again I have no catalogue. Location and date would be a good start, some slides have dates on them which is a start and some a couple of scribbled words, which may help. Can I suggest that we all catalogue our images and documents and share them with two friends, and tell our loved ones what we wish to happen to the stuff. It is such a waste to see/ hear of all this info just being skipped, and it is no good to anyone without your index, which you may have taken to the grave with you. If you want to manage your pictures can I recommend DigiKam, it free software, and very very good in my book. Runs on most computer OSs.

In fact she use to have two lines of ice sheeting one a liitle bit lower that the current one(well keep her part ballasted) and one along the top of the second plank/bottom of the top plank to protect the seam there when loaded. We decided over 50 years ago not to replace the top line of ice plating. We also discovered that she had boated without full ice plating and that the scar (over an inch deep) had been very carefully squared off and filled with searing timber. Breaking a channel so you can steer is actually quite hard to achieve, even rocking only gives you an extra foot or so in thick ice and you need more than that on most bends. It is only when in ice that you discover this, so you now have two constrains when steering, where the channel is and where you can/have broken the ice. Backing off and having another go is quite regular so not only is it slow anyway, you also spend some time going backwards. The video was of Leigh to the MSC docks for a film appearance, The Bridgewater guys where great and sung the tank for us, which was a real pain I believe as it was frozen over, so opening the gates was a pig. Normally we would allow 3 to 4 hrs took over twice as long.

Ice is a funny old stuff it can be less than a mill thick in some places and really thick in others. I would guess that going across the Moss will be bad as the canal is slightly higher than the surrounding ground, and the heat will have vanished from the water there, so it will I predict be well frozen. As to travelling in Ice I really enjoy it, but it can be a slow job. I will post here what I have written elsewhere. Just to keep the moving in ice brigade happy Well when the return button will stop posting early I will! - Twice now! I don't not know the C&RT by-laws in detail however I do know the Bridgewater ones. They make it clear that if your boat can not stand being in the canal when frozen that it is your responsibility to remove it to a safe place, be that a marina or the bank. The reason for this rule is that maintenance boats need to be able to move what ever the weather. I am aware of boats punching through 4 inch ice. see Youtube. I suspect C&RT have a similar rule. All insurance companies will go straight to this rule should you attempt to claim and point out that your boat is not fit for purpose and therefore the insurance is invalid. The most common failure is that the ice is punched into your boat and when the thaw comes your boat then sinks. This does not need a boat to come past but just the wind or water flow, can achieve this. I am aware that several owners of GRP boats have attempted to claim and all have failed, I am assuming for this reason. This is as far back as the 1960's when most pleasure boats were GRP and there was still commercial traffic, which would not stop till the ice was really really thick. That said its the really thin ice which can do the damage, all to do with point loading I'm told.

As the OP will not blow his trumpet, I will. He has been around a very long time helping the canal movement, in all sorts of ways. This is from the Stratford blitz time in 1979 where he is directly behind the cement mixer, and he like a lot of others was down there every fortnight helping to keep the Southern Stratford going. Some people on here can be very quick to criticise, rather than help the movement, maybe they are just having bad days. It is a shame that when someone sticks their head above the parapet they immediately get shot at, it is just so welcoming NOT.

He was the principle engineer North for the DWE. (Docks & Waterways Executive) Based in the Offices on Lime St Liverpool. He was given the job of closing the Llangollen Canal as it was no longer required, as there was no traffic using it. His plan to save it, so he later claimed, was to sell the water to Mid Cheshire water board , which would require the canal to be kept whole as he would sell the water from Hurleston Res on the Chester Canal, and continue to take the feed from Horseshoe falls, at the other end. To reduce costs he would only maintain the depth to 2ft, and he was also helped by the fact that Hurleston bottom has collapsed in slightly reducing the width, which meant that the deeper older boats would not be able to get up there. This lead to the requirement that boats had to be 6ft 10" wide to be able to navigate the whole system. This number had come in previously as some of Cheshire locks were really suffering from salt subsidence, which does not have the same repayments as coal, and were not being rebuilt, so they too were getting narrow, (in fact some still are) and so the later admirals were built to 6ft 10"

The longest boat I know of, (the thought police will be around with the full list later) and travelled with is the Big William the royalty Class Motor. She is 72ft 5inches I believe and the shortest Narrow lock I have been through with her is Brades Staircase , which was a swine, everything up and get the boat in just the right position and she will just fit. She may not have fitted if loaded level. Unfortunately Alan (Taff) Jones has died, so I can not consult him, as to if there was anywhere else which was no go, but I am not aware of anywhere else. The killer is going down hill and getting the single bottom gate open, around the stem.

The Mikron Research is available, upon request, by the time they did Idle Women they recorded the interviews they undertook. I believe these recordings to be in the Mikron Archive. However they only talked as far as I am aware to the southern fleet based ladies, as these were the easiest too Contact. I have to say that having met several of these ladies they were a remarkable group, definitely from the "naire be stuck" group of people. I believe that after they had see the Mikron show they all went back to Tyseley and all of them got across the top gates without problem, quite remarkable given they were all in there late 80's. I hope I'm still that fit at that age.

You need to go for Satellite broadband, which is not cheap circa £500 setup cost and £70 per month for a high data high, reliable mobile link, and that is not always possible Trees kill the signal. You will need a golf ball on the roof which is about 3ft sphere. Canals are not a high priority location of the phone companies and as they swap over to high speeds 5G 6G, etc, the reception will become worse, in rural area's.

I would suggest that one of the biggest problems which does not occur as much on the continent is that design of the boats on the canals. As C&RT do not have rules for the Design & Construction of boats which use their waterways there are some out there which are really poorly designed. They have flat base plates which protrudes further than the hull sides. These boats tend to cause huge damage to lock gates. It can also easily happen if the boat is not level, something which the old carrying boats would not do as it made steering so much harder, they would always trim their boats to be level. If you look at a set of gates which have been brought out over the winter you can clearly see where they have really dug into the timber of the gates and the seals. Most boats on the continent are not flat bottomed, but round chined so this damage does not happen the same.

That is interesting graph from Ploto. It shows the refilling of Barrowford is almost in sync with Winterburn. Barrowford is normally filled with surplus water from the Summit so it actually has a very wide catchment area, where as that for Foulridge is a lot more limited.

What is often forgotten is that there were more than one group of Idle Women. The ones who wrote up their experiences were all based with the southern GU fleet and worked out of London. I have since discovered that a lady I knew, was also an Idle Woman, but only found out after her death, she never ever mentioned it, in all the years I knew her, but it would explain her love of canals, and why she also married into them, not a boater but an office worker. She it would appear, was based out of Chester. There was also at least one group of IW based on the L&L

Somewhere Hadfield states the the Coventry, the Oxford, and the Trent and Mersey, Canal Co's got together in the 1790's (may be earlier - see canals of the West Midlands) and formally agreed the gauge to be Seven & one quarter feet, ie 7ft 3Inches. Over the years to reduce maintenance this has slowly been pulled in to the current figure of 6ft 10" brought about by Mr North and his grand plan to save the Llangollen canal from closure. Having said that C&RT are well aware the a good number of the boats in the National Historic fleet are built to 7ft 1" - thus the rebuild of lock 4 at Hurlesdon, shame lock 3 is also narrow. Interestingly at a similar time the last working boats built the mkII admirals where also built to 6ft10" as D&WE were concerned about the effects that brine pumping was having on Cheshire locks. As for depth the Deepest original lock on the system now is Antonys Lock 77 on The Rochdale the three deeper locks are all replacement locks for two locks, Tuel, Bath & Middlewood. Not sure which lock would have been the deepest as built, as Antonys Lock is this size due to the same subsidence as Vinegar Lock 10 on the Ashton. Both canals have similar shallow locks Lock 80 on the Rochdale and Lock 4 on the Ashton, which is where the coal fields run out into the Manchester Sandstone Bluff.

We started our BCN Challenge from there many years ago, and found the residents really helpful and friendly. They lent us a key to get out to the Waggon & Horses just up the hill.

Thank You - I thought it was just me doing something silly with my preferences, not a real bug. -- Cheers

I predicted this was going to happen a long time ago, DEFRA will want to kick this as far as they can, down the road. It would not surprise me to see it go past the next general election. Given this activists should be already badgering their MP's about it, however the IWA NABO etc do not appear to be doing so. As far as DEFRA are concerned they are winning, as inflation is getting rid of the problem, for them, we have effectively lost 18% in real term already, and we have 3 more years of high inflation to cope with.

Which proves the point, of calling things the Old main line, is purely by agreement, as this map clearly shows, that the length between the top of Smethwick and Spon Lane which we now refer to as the old main line, is not the old main line at all, but a newer old main line, as original old main went up and down a further 6 locks, 3 each side, to the top summit which was got rid of soon after this map was produced! The same applies to straightening out, which happen around Oldbury, which interestingly was referred to, using a different name when C&RT released a stoppage note some time ago about works on the m5. They used the name (old main line) bracketed to refer to it. Although we did not loose the Oldbury loops until relatively recently. I suspect the C&RT database has to use correct names as they have to be able to prove ownership of the land, and refer back to other historic records which they hold.