davidg

Welsh steam coal, not anthracite. The washery/grading plant at Ffos y fran (the last available source of Welsh steam coal) broke down in January and overnight Welsh steam coal was set to disappear*. Tata at Port Talbot bought up the remaining stocks/output as they burn dust so don’t require lump coal. In the summer Ffos y fran had second thoughts and repaired the grading plant, but the price went up from ~£200 per ton to north of £500. At my railway the scramble for alternatives led us through a product which shall remain nameless (I’m a fireman so suffered through that particular experiment) to where we are now, which is using Wildfire at around £350 a ton. We are managing with Wildfire but as the locomotives get a spanking rather than pootling around it is only just sometimes. I think anthracite is still being produced in the west of the coalfield (FyF is near Merthyr in the middle where the best steam coal came from, Middle Dyffryn anyone?) and permission has been granted for new anthracite extraction somewhere over there - Onllwyn? Wildfire uses crushed anthracite as one of its ingredients along with a binding agent (molasses?) and pixie dust. It produces horrible clinker which clogs the grate. *back in the spring a little girl was watching fascinated as I was coaling up so I presented her with a lump of Welsh steam coal saying take a good look at it as it was among the last welsh steam coal she would see.

Hi Ian, The Smiffs are obviously not keeping you busy enough.😊 A couple of questions I've been asking myself since you first put photos/drawings up of your rudder on this/other threads: How do you drop the rudder out should the need arise? Normally there is enough play in the rudder tube to angle the rudder stock sideways so that the rudder can drop down one side of the skeg but with the wide flat plates top & bottom (& a wide skeg compared to a cast one) is this still possible? And sort of related, should the rudder get knocked out of the bottom cup by the inevitable shopping trolley (or Vauxhall Astra bonnet in one memorable case I experienced - it was attached to the rest of the Astra) is it light enough so you can lift it back in? It looks as if there is a fair weight of steel involved in that fabrication compared to a flat plate. The performance improvements look good and it will be intersting to hear how you find it; I wouldn't do it to my boat since it's one of god's own boats and handles like a dream but having steered other boats where it feels as if you are waving a bit of wet lettuce around in the water I can see the motivation. David

There's a village nearby?

Several, but in each case only from one end😊

Because the cottage is at the lock where the canal commonly called the Huddersfield Broad Canal joins the C&H. The name of the canal when it was built was Sir John Ramsden’s Canal. In the same way that the canal commonly called the Huddersfield Narrow Canal was the Huddersfield Canal when it was built, later the Huddersfield & Manchester Railway and Canal Company. Sir John Ramsden was a major player in 18th century Huddersfield, commemorated in Ramsden Street among other places. I learned to swim at Ramsden Street baths.

Well I know where you're coming from. Maybe it's a Golcar thing. 😊

For those interested there is a rather lovely evocation of this area in “Black Lion Crossing”, a model railway based on the area though not of a specific location, built by Geoff Kent. There are buildings modelled on ones Geoff photographed back in the fifties. https://www.flickriver.com/photos/simage61/33936559678/

Well, as the true expert (the owner) is on holiday, I'll tell you it is indeed Bingley.

Huddersfield & Manchester Railway & Canal Company. Incorporated 21st July 1845.

Further in than that, the line into Birmingham Central Goods?

Rather handsome isn’t it

The station building gives that one away.

Home of Dougal, which I hope to have a go at firing before too long😊

That went well then. Passed it broken down on the Barby straight. "What do I want with that Swedish sh***" as someone once said😁

Sideway

Spoke too soon, stand down

Not as of yesterday there isn't. Need to get your finger out, get it painted, could have it in the water by next Friday😀

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.