davidg

Unless my calculations are wrong - 1 at Suttons, 2-7 at Hillmorton- that's 9, not 10. Second lock up which had the towpath side rebuilt three(?) years ago.

I wish I shared your optimism. Can't find the link right now but there is a lovely quote form the fireman on a railway (Amerton maybe?) trialling ecoal at the weekend to the effect that the plastic bag it came in would burn better than ecoal. Wouldn't fancy romping up Sylfaen bank with the regulator in the roof courtesy of my son,* which we did yesterday, on something like that😁 *I did say we had plenty of steam so get it used.

You are, of course, perfectly entitled to hold that opinion. If you do I rather think you are missing the point of a Hitler rant and perhaps they are not for you.🙂

Bill, the pipeline was originally put in to bring chalk slurry from a quarry at Tottenhoe to Southam; it came via the works at Rugby to which it also supplied chalk slurry. As you say, quarrying continues at Southam, indeed extraction is now taking place south of the Southam - Rugby road so it may well be that the flow in in the pipeline has been reversed so some of the output of Southam goes to Rugby that way, though judging by the lorry traffic I see daily between Itchington & Princethorpe it can't be much! Tottenhoe was beside the railway line from Leighton Buzzard to Dunstable and there were daily trainloads of chalk and returning empties between there and Southam. The opening of the pipeline meant the end of this traffic and with it the final closure of the railway line between Marton Junction and Weedon east of the bridge by the Blue Lias; passenger trains between Leamington Spa and Weedon had finished on 15th September 1958. Southam continued to receive coal and send out cement bagged and in bulk until the 1984 miners strike. I can remember rakes of 16t minerals in the exchange sidings beyond the works and they did provide a source of coal for the range for certain arm dwellers at WFBCo. Back to Greaves, Bull & Lakin: when I did some research on the various lime & cement works in the area thirty years ago - no internet back then so things like 25" maps had to be copied at the county records office - it was still possible to explore one of the pits which they worked. Some of the embankment taking the narrow gauge line from the works to the pits and over the LNWR was still there (behind Greaves Cottages it may still be there), some had been levelled. The lower pit, nearer the works, was there and I looked for signs of the tunnel which eventually connected it to the upper pit, adjacent to the Rugby road, but never found it. The upper pit had been landfilled by then, I can still remember it in operation in the early 80s, and subsequently landscaped and grassed over. The household waste disposal site at Stockton is a last remnant of this. I'm away from home at the moment but I should have some photos I took at that time of the the pit and of the remains of the kilns if I can find them.

Bingo! Here you go, Greaves Bull & Lakin's works and the bottom lock at Stockton pre-widening. It's a scan of a scan so apologies for the poor quality.

The ones by the Blue Lias bridge were Greaves, Bull & Lakin. If I can find it I have a pre-widening photo of the bottom lock taken off the bridge which shows the kilns. And now I've found my notes the works up the flight in Ray's photo was Griffin's. I can't find the reference at the moment but the railway siding at Griffin's was used to tranship some of the output of Napton brickworks from boat to rail for onward transport.

A fortune awaits you in Milton Keynes*.. I think you mean Penydarren! *The location of the Network Rail timetable planning office.

Oh tempora, o mores! Back in the day when I was growing up haute cuisine in Slaithwaite was a pork pie from Walker Garside's (butchers) and as for the beer, a desert. The Swan at Crimble (Wilson's) was about the best bet in Slaithwaite. The Tetley's in The Railway at Marsden or the Wills' at Cop Hill were worth the schlep but otherwise Bass Charrington pretty much ruled in the Colne Valley. You'll be telling me the Globe is being turned into yuppie flats next.....oh, hang on.

A draw knife is your man. Though having just looked at prices I'm locking mine up.

Second point of order m'lud: no welder need have their tiny & easily confused brain troubled during the manufacture & fitting of that particular step.😊

If you do go and take a look at it try walking down the gunwhale from one end of the cabin to the other;. Then try doing it quickly.

So is there any truth in the story I was told that the steel used in the conversion came from the back door of the press shop at Longbridge? The last remnants I took off suggested this was a possibility.

GWR coaching stock was painted crimson lake for a period early in the 20th century. The preserved Great Western railmotor is painted in it.

Also keeping the air miles low tonight, featuring Napton Post Office

I'm sitting eating my breakfast in Napton and am about to drive north to work (Brinklow); there are no roads closed which prevent this, nor have there been due to HS2. There is one major road closure at the moment, the A425 the other side of Southam heading west to Leamington, which HS2 have just announced they wish to extend from 9 months to 20 months (and the original plan was to provide a temporary diversion so no closure would have taken place) which is a PITA if you are heading in that direction. Rumours of the north being cut off from Napton are greatly exaggerated.?

The green and yellow boat is the other half of Vela. I have done some work on this half for the current owners while it was at WFBCo. The boat is now on the Rochdale Canal (or possibly the Calder & Hebble - not sure of the exact location of the owners' house in relation to the junction twixt the two).

This one? There are quite a few similar photos from the Somerset levels.

Not quite Ray, we would never have built something so.........err, distinctive. The boat first appeared tied up on the offside near Nelson Lane bridge in Warwick. It was subsequently moved to WFBCo and the bulbous bits added to create more internal space so the owner could live on it.

My money would be on someone who can't spell immersion (heater)

Spoilsport ?

Cripes, I've been selling mine to people too cheaply. One box turned up on ebay several years ago, when I won the auction the seller said they had four boxes, would I like the lot. It has turned out to be a very long term investment, not sure if I'm ahead yet.? They are very sweet little switches; unlike the secondhand ones which turn up regularly the sprung contacts haven't got lazy so they have a very satisfying positve action.

Of course you could use switches which swing both ways like these. I might know someone who has a stock of brand new (in about 1950) old stock?

There's a rather fine pub in Huddersfield called The Slubbers Arms. Gets a bit crowded before and after Town games.

Lifted from the CRT archive, I was actually looking for a different photo but came across this one. Looking at it again the headlamp on the motor boat to the left of the Edgware is also offset, and dropped. To address the original question: I picked up a good condition headlamp on ebay a couple of weeks ago for £20 to replace the one which has self destructed after 37 years on the boat. I took it off to repaint it for possibly the first time to discover the difficulty of getting paint to stick to the holes which should be metal.

Obviously nobody in the Grand Union Canal Company told their counterparts in the Grand Union Canal Carrying Company that. Note also the offset headlamp on the Edgware which I don't think anyone has had the cojones to replicate yet, probably because it looks so odd.