Rose Narrowboats

I have also owned this boat when it was the dredger "Susan". The way the legs were cut in to the hull, and the fact that at some point (probably when converted) it had a new gunwhale angle put in to the mid-body with some very heavy rivets made it look as if it was more of a "bitsa" than it was. I've got no financial interest in the outcome of this, but based on the condition of it when I owned it, the similarity in shape to Ben and Oxford 1 and with" the "benefit" of many hours crawling around the bilges and having seen it out of the water I can confirm that there is no doubt that the greatest part of the hull was a Harris built motor with a relatively short "new" for end with the JCB backactor mounted on it, in just the same style as Matty's big Woolwich dredger conversion (was it Darley?). There's a thought - does anyone remember a Harris fore-end lying around at Mattys/Dewsbury & Proud's? I sense Pete that you disapprove of what's happened to it, but it was a horrible machine to drive, and unfit for commercial work without spending £30k on it which it was never going to get because it was also disturbingly unstable (another owner capsized it about 10 years ago) in comparison to more modern dredgers. I nursed it through a couple of jobs because it was all we could get at the time but as soon as the opportunity to buy a decent ex-BW dredger arose I jumped at it. Susan then sat around, costing insurance, mooring etc whilst I tried to find a future for it - we had some thoughts of converting it into a jack leg pontoon - but that didn't really need the back end, and the back end wasn't good enough to build another boat around unless you had more money than sense. So there it continued to sit while the enthusiast in me tried to defend it from commercial reality. When Ed approached me with a view to buying it, and told me his plan I was very pleased to sell it to him. Ed has almost certainly spent more on it than he will ever get back, but has saved a relatively uncommon type of boat from a very bleak future that could easily have ended up scrapped. Come to think of it, Ed has probably saved Susan from scrapping three times now. I've got plenty of pictures of it as it was as I am sure has Ed. For all its faults, it was an easy boat to love (think the one eyed, three legged dog with the missing ear at the dog's home) because of what it clearly had been and I too would love to find out what it was prior to being turned into Susan. There's a good picture of it taken in the 1990s in Ray Shill's book, breasted up to a mud hopper that by sheer fluke I also now own.

I honestly don't think I've ever seen a big Northwich counter that far in the water before. Edit to add: Very non-standard ram's head decoration too!

Someone on a share boat put their water hose into their fuel filler at our place last year and went inside to have breakfast. After about 100ltrs of diesel had overflowed into the canal they realised their error and decided a prompt departure would be the best course of action. Funnily enough they didn't get far.......

If you are looking at being upper Thames based, then don't forget about Osney Bridge bridge - only 7'6 in the centre of the arch.

I suspect that is the issue - getting the police to bother looking. Long story very abbreviated: A few years ago a boat a generator was stolen from a boat in our yard along with some coal from our cage. We pieced a few bits of info together and decided the fibreglass cruiser which had arrived in our yard fromn the south in the dead of night with no lights on, and left in a "hurry" just before dawn (it was November) heading north might know something about it. We rang the police who had no interest bar handing out a crime number. I felt, on behalf of the customer who had just had his generator nicked while the boat was in my care, that wasn't good enough so set out and with some help from other boaters had found the boat (complete with generator) by lunchtime near Mancetter. Even after the bloke had come after me with an axe it still took the police an hour to turn up. He'd left by then, but with a 10 minute headstart and heading for Atherstone he wouldn't be hard to catch in my opinion - but it was "too muddy" in the opinion of the police officers who didn't really want to get out of their car. However they did tell me (again) I shouldn't have reported the theft as it was not my property which had been stolen. I did get the generator back though - and I'm not going looking for the guy who assaulted the lock keeper in case my suspicions are right and it's the same guy.

As I understand it is a police matter. I was asked to contact CRT's enforcement officer if I spotted them - presumably as my past experience that police won't search for a boat isn't unusual.

If you flip the image it could easily be just north of Hartshill heading south. Zoomed in there are buildings to the right (in the flipped image) of the bush which look about right for the maintenance yard and that bit is quite wide as per the photo, but there are no trees behind the towingpath hedge there these days. Has anyone got any old photos of that stretch?

I always knew him as "Boffy". In respect of his cabins, the phrase "Boffy wobbles" is a technical term round these parts.

Local to Braunston (so possibly the original "Buckby Can") I think as just about every picture I've seen of cans being painted at Nursers shows this type. Its construction is quite basic (though time consuming) and is clearly built by someone with very limited tooling, unlike the GU pattern cans which were made by a large concern (Joseph Ash & Sons) in Birmingham. It will be a while - we're not up to speed with GU 1 gallon pattern yet, and then there's the GU 3 gallon to do.

I have one of those cans and it's on my list one day to produce a replica of them along with the "GU" style ones we are doing. Thank you for the endorsement Dave! See you soon I hope.

Ultimately it's your boat so your choice, but from the condition of the engine bay it doesn't look as if the engine is leaking oil, so if it's it not burning it either then there's probably not much (if anything) wrong with it and the gearbox should be no more than a morning's worth of work to change. Someone who is familiar with it could probably do it in a couple of hours if under pressure. Engines will usually outlast quite a few small mechanical gearboxes on canal use where they do a lot more gear engagement/dis-engagement than at sea. If the gearbox outlives the engine it can always be fitted to the new engine.

There are several versions of that box, identical except in terms of scale. Given the size of the engine its probably either a 100 or 125 (later ZF10 and ZF12). Don't think the ZF10 is available any more, the ZF12 is at about £1000. The smaller (mechanical) PRM boxes are designed to be a straight swap and are a bit cheaper.

It's a Hurth/ZF mechanical box, so low oil level won't be a factor in engagement. As mentioned cable adjustment is a possibility worth checking, or it might have the wrong oil in it (it should be ATF), but more likely the clutch packs are knackered. If so, my advice is buy a new one. Extensive (and expensive) experience with a couple of Hurth's we had in our fleet has taught me that by the time the clutch packs are knackered, so many other bits are out of tolerance that they are not economic to rebuild properly and if not rebuilt properly will usually not last more than a few hundred hours before the problem recurs. Once a Hurth clutch has picked up drive, they don't tend to lose it again, so I'd suggest the loss of power after a period of time is more likely down to leaves given the time of year. Edit to add: because of the design of the clutch plates, the thump is normal when the drive does take up.

Clearly you don't know what you are talking about, and should sell the boat (at an inflated price, obviously) to someone who does before you smash some lock doors up with your large barge.......or maybe not......

Quite a few exceptions actually on the Aylesbury Arm, with some random ones the "normal" way round.

I think one of the few constants of narrow lock construction is that the top gate balance beam is always on the towingpath side (someone will instantly come up with exception to that rule in 3,2,1....) so I also think Calcutt top lock as the wooden walkway makes sense for access from the lock keeper's house/toll office. The other thing that intrigues me about that photo is that the visible bottom gate of the narrow lock has had the balance beam chopped off, and then piece of timber bolted back on - I guess we'll never know why!

The can itself though is the same type as used by Nursers, so even though the painting doesn't look local to this area, the can is.

Either I've missed something, or it always came in below the Nelson - the lie of the land wouldn't permit anything else.

Not sure Mr Blagrove got that entirely right - no way was the GJC going to give any of its precious water from the summit reservoirs away. They may have had to pass a certain amount of water from the Bragborough stream back into the Bragborough stream but: 1)I can't see how they did this from bottom lock as the stream doesn't exist round there - the stream was in the bottom of the valley and they built the canal and the reservoirs over it (and I'm pretty sure the reservoirs were built at the same time as the canal GJC) 2) What water mills (other than a possible one at Bottom Lock) - there's nothing else along the course of the Bragborough Stream until it flows into the Leam, and there's nothing on the course of the Leam as far as Staverton Road (Mill Farm....) to suggest any other mills in the immediate vicinity. 3) The OCC had abstraction rights from any watercourse within a quite some distance of their cut enshrined into their act, so I'm pretty sure they'd already nicked the water from the Bragborough stream and it was they that the GJC had to keep happy!

Bragborough Stream runs into the Grand Junction in the pound just below the Nelson. The last bit of the GJC was built down the course of the stream and there is evidence to suggest that there was a water mill where bottom lock is now situated. The drydocks in Braunston Marina discharge into a culvert that runs under the old line and into the stream bed - hence the boggy bit between the canal and the A45 between the stop house and Castle Bridge, and there must originally have been a weir somewhere around the marina site too, but since the 1840's and surplus water goes over the "new" weir at the start of the puddle banks and back into the stream, which runs into the River Leam.

The footbridge (105) at Shuckburgh always spanned the full width of the cut (as does the one near Wormleighton, and just happened to need replacing at the point the GU had a lot of government money to spend. The GUCC and the OCC had in depth talks and the Braunston to Wigrams section was nearly sold to the GUCC, but the OCC directors changed their mind at a very late stage. The GUCC board must have thought it was a done deal in 1933 though because if you look next to bridge 105 there is a GUC boundary marker in the field! In the end they reached a toll reduction deal with the OCC in return for carrying out improvements but I think they were limited to dredging and piling. None of the bridges would have required widening as far as I know being built 14' wide at water level, and a number of the original bridges survived until much later (101, 104) or still survive today (100, 102). 107 and 108 were rebuilt in the 30's, but that was as part of road improvements and paid for by the local authority I think. Money was spent on widening the Grand Junction as although it has wide locks, it was technically a narrow canal, albeit of more generous dimensions then the Oxford, so the money was spent mainly on dredging and piling rather than obvious widening, and that's where the problem lay. At about the point the gov't money ran out as they got to the outskirts of Birmingham the channel in many places wasn't really suitable for the introduction of wide beam boats on masse (CRT take note!) so the subsidiary carrying fleet built a large number of narrowboats as a stop gap. I often wonder had WW2 not intervened whether we'd have seen the introduction of the planned 100ton barges, and the impact that would have had. There would have been pressure on the Oxford to widen Hillmorton to provide access to the Warwickshire coalfields (The Ashby was regarded by its builders as a wide canal believe or not), and maybe then there would have been a second round of modernisation in south as there was in the north-east in the 1960's - things would look a bit different now!

British coal is still being used on some heritage railways, but from opencast. The WSR uses stuff from Wales (Ffos-y-fran I presume), but when the Flying Moneypit visited recently they switched at the NRM's request to some from oop north - Northumberland I think. Some lines use imported coal from Russia, but none of that helps with what deliveries are made by boat!

Sadly, no - I've just had to "borrow" one off a boat we've got laid up at the moment to put in a workboat that's about to go out on hire for the winter as the one installed resembled a jigsaw puzzle.

The Class-1-c/Tomlow smokeboxes fit Eppings, so the reverse should apply, but the Epping ones are not as strong in my experience.