Rose Narrowboats

You're quite right, it was Braunston Tunnel - brain fade! Mouse and Mole were the first two, Frog was built later, and was a bit bigger (certainly taller possibly longer) out of a stern end which had been removed from something else, and fitted with a Perkins 3.152. It was removed from Barby Wood and scrapped a good few years ago, and I think Mole has also gone the same way now. All three nose dived horribly under power if not attached to anything - you could submerge the front deck quite easily.... They were designed to fit in a lock with a push tug, and worked with Bantams. The problem now is "Vanadium" has a cabin of sorts which would make forward vision from a Bantam or Bird class very tricky without CCTV.

One of two built for the Blisworth tunnel relining, so early 80s.

A batch of short joys (not as mud hoppers, they weren't tanked) were built, of rivetted construction, by Harris's in the 50's for working with push tugs on the Tame Valley and B&F for GKN as stated further up thread and this boat was one of them. At least four of them later passed to Alfred Matty. It hadn't occured to me to regard Mouse as historic!

There was another thread about it recently and it is indeed one of the Harris built short joeys for the GKN traffic, now shallowed considerably in hull depth. It will be interesting to see what they find as an historic tug to push it around. Bantams and Bird class wouldn't be suitable, which narrows that field to one which I aware of which I don't think is for sale.

It looks like one of the ex-Hardy Spicer ones to me. Four of them wound up at Matty's, and having had the pleasure in being involved with their removal from there, they were definitely built deeper drafted than Vanadium is now. The give away will be how much of the knees are left - I suspect they are just cut through where the new baseplate has been welded on. P.S. I'm not sure why anyone would say that 50' makes it likely to be a mud hopper. Mud hoppers were always full length until BWB built some short ones (which were more often used for materials than mud) in thee late 70s. 50' hoppers are popular nowadays because they are easier to move by road as you don't need to file a movement notice.

There was also one on diplay at Gloucester for a while. There were definitely quite a few built, and as BuckbyLocks says they used a "fingerbar" cutter similar to contemporary hay mowers. Are there any more images of the joey in that set please? I think it's the ex-spoon dredger Malcolm Braine subsequently purchased and restored which is now in my care.

The "Mon & Brec" moniker came about, I was reliably informed by someone there at the time, because the deeds etc. relating to said canals were held at Melbury House in a large ex-GWR file marked Monmouthshire and Breconshire Canals". At some point people within BWB got careless with the use of the "s" and the modern name was born. That name, along with the Staffs. & Worcester Canal, and "towpath" were all things I was educated not to say from a young age - I just wish I could remember all of it!

That is very low in the water for that design of boat IMHO. Pretty sure it's on the bottom in fact.

Or you'd banned from dialling 999 - damn, wrong thread!

From what I can see of it in the pictures that looks like a Springer to me, in which case, from the lack of freeboard, I suspect it's stuck due to a lack of bouyancy.

The locks were duplicated in 1840, and had been renumbered prior to the compilation 1843 lengths book. They've never needed a full stoppage to get materials on site fore that lock before, but Hillmorton is now "cared" for by West Mids and none of the staff have any knowledge or affinity to the area....

For what it's worth, we've just switched over our tank to HVO and we're now running the hire fleet on it. Early days yet, but so far it is living up to the promises. We are also retailing it, but a £1.08 for domestic, how many people will buy it remains to be seen.

I'm another that would love to see updates again.

That was unexpected and very sad news to read. A thouroughly nice chap and excellent signwriter who did many boats for us. RIP Jon...

And it will also wear the pumps and injectors much faster, as to the best of my knowledge AVGAS doesn't have the lubrication additives that diesel has.

I've never heard or seen anything to suggest that working narrowboats passed each other in bridgeholes. I'd imagine the wide boats when laden would have been a lot slower through most bridges though as there's very little room for water to move round them. The modernisation work done by the GUC in the 1930s was funded by government money, which ran out before the job was completed. As a consequence there were many sections where the channel was not regarded as wide enough for loaded wide boats to pass, and one bridge in B'ham (before Sampson Road Depot) which was too narrow. BWB ran some further trials in the 1950's and reached the same conclusions.

True, there's the road layby at the north end to set the crane up next to. I'm too law abiding, obviously!

No it wasn't....Are you thinking of the the fact that part of the Coventry was built by the Birmingham & Fazeley? There's no way a wide beam was craned in at Colehurst Farm - Les Wilson's RB22s are long gone, and I don't think you'd get a wide boat over the bridge. He only ever lifted boats for himself, generally empty shells, anyway. Cranage is generally a bit of a no-no round the old power station at Hawkesbury due to the overhead cables around the substation on the off-side. To have been put in here it would have been over my dead body, and I'm still typing, so I'm struggling to think of anywhere sensible to put a crane to lift any boat, never mind a wide beam in on this length.

There was a station boat which when it ran as the butty of a hotel boat pair was named Ellesmere. (FWIW the motor was a modern boat called "Brackley")

A boat arrived at our waterpoint last week and asked for diesel. It was a turnround day so I explained that unfortunately we were unable to assist, and why. I also eplained where the next retailers were heading south. The response was abrupt, followed up by making a complaint to another member of our staff who, not being halfway through stripping the blacking off a hull, looked cleaner and therefore probably more important than me. They then proceeded to fly their drone over our premises without consultation (which I believe is a breach of CAA regulations) and also well within 50m of the railway which is definitely a breach of CAA regs. As they left they started filming themselves on the stern deck. Othe than that they had an attitude which implied they were in some way special in a celebriy kind of way and that normal rules (presumably including GDPR) don't apply to them, I had absolutely no idea who they were until I watched the video at the start of this thread. I'll have to watch the next episode now to see if we're featured and how dramatised the unavailability of diesel on a Monday morning can be.

The actual ratio is irrelevant - the fact it was underpropped for the ratio is what matters. Most of our boats are fitted with 3:1 boxes; it's more fuel efficient and there's less shaft & stern bush wear, but they're not revving their heads off at cruising speed. Sound does play a big part in perception though and of course everyone is building things as quiet as possible. Back in the good old days it was noticeable that you were far more likely to get shouted to slow down with a 3-clyinder Lister than a two-pot even if you were doing the same speed. I imagine (if any ever makes it a viable proposition on the inland waterways) that the problem will get even worse with electric boats as the only sound they'll hear will be their breaking wash We have a data logger under development which will also have the function to put on a red light, followed by an annoying squawking if the revs are left to high for too long, however that feature is useless for anything other than the day boat, as there are plenty of places the rest of our fleet gets where the use of higher revs is entirely justified, and on occasion essential, e.g. the Soar, Trent, Severn, Avon, and Thames.

The decision to outsource the shell building was, according to Julie at the time, simply because Pete had had enough of doing steelwork.

A bit more BMC trivia: The Nuffield Mini tractor (designed by Harry Ferguson) was originally launched in the early 1960s using the 998cc A series based engine - the diesel version producing a heady 16 horsepower. The model was called the 9/16 (9 forward gears, 16hp) but it very rapidy became apparent that the A-series lump was up to the job and the tracor was slighty re-engineered to use the B-series engine in both petrol and diesel form. The diesel version was rated at 25hp, and known as the 9/25. In 1969 the Nuffield 9/25 was rebranded as the Leyland 154 and now quoted as 28.5hp. I cannot find any difference in the parts books, workshop manual or the fuel injection pump setting data to account for this change in hp, so it might just be a different way of measuring the output (maybe the marketing department did it instead of the engineering dept?) Nuffield tractors were produced at the Bathgate factory of BMC (later Leyland) until 1981, but for quite some time before that they had also been produced by BMCs Turkish subsidiary under licence, and at some point in the late 70s Bathgate stopped making the 154s altogether and they were imported from Turkey. Before Leyland sold the business to Marshalls in 1981 the Leyland 154 had been discontinued and replaced by the Leyland 304, which was basically the 154 back end now mated to the BMC 1.8 engine. Marshall continued to sell the 304 until they left the tractor business in the mid 80s but the tractor continued to be built until 1989. It was the factory in Turkey that provided the new engines (both 1.5 and 1.8) to the marine industry in the UK. Calcutt were still importing the 1.8 into the late 90s. The rest came from Sherpa 200 vans which were still quite easily obtainable. I know several hire fleets that used to marinise ex-van engines, which had a different version of the CAV DPA injection pump with a mechanical governor rather than hydraulic governor found in the tractor (and industrial engine. The 1.8 was superseded around 1988 in the Sherpa by the Perkins Prima which whilst on paper was a much better engine, turned out to be a diaster in delivery vehicles which spent a lot of time idling as they glazed the bores. A friend of mine had a fleet of Sherpa milk floats, and after many hilarious tow starts down the road in clouds of smoke at 4am the newer Perkins powered Sherpas were rapidly disposed of and they went back to the BMCs. When they ran out of bodywork (as Sherpas tended to), a number of those engines went on to new lives in a local hire fleet (not mine).

I've got an Einhell 36v one (it uses 2 x 18v LI-Ion batteries) It's not a Stihl by any stretch, but for the amount I use it it's much less hassle than storing a petrol one, never fails to start, and the batteries last longer than I have ever needed to use it for. Keep an eye on Toolstation - they often have the 4A/h batteries on offer at two for £59.

There are photo's of two boats in that gallery one of which is a Springer, but not the one that is now yours.