Rose Narrowboats

I may be the only person that cares - but they're called balance beams, not lock beams. They were repainted into grey as a traditional colour for the SUC within the last 20 years or 60, having been in standard BW black and white for at least 30 years prior to that. It was I think one of Tom Chaplain's projects when he worked for BWB in what now seems the good old days.

I've never seen a 1.5 with more than three main bearings? I think the tractor crankshaft only differs in that the bore hole for spigot bush is bigger. The 1.8 is five main bearing.

Actually, for the pedants, the BWB bye-law stated that the index plates must be attached within fifteen feet of the bow or stern and clearly visible from either side ? I'm not sure whether that still stands under CRT though.

Hi Pete, I'm working on it - mine are getting tired, and as the Index number system was introduced by my Grandfather I feel his former boat should really continue to comply with the relevant byelaw! Best regards, Anthony

They were used from the 70s to the present day. I can supply them as per the originals either in the original white over red or the later black over white. CRT are one of our customers for them.

We got Toucan (60'6") up to Melbourne on the Pocklington and Stamford Bridge on the Derwent in the late 80's. From memory we shared the locks with our friends' 45 footer, but we did have to push round some of the bottom gates coming back down, certainly with the bow fender still on, and I don't remember lifting the stern fenders either. The biggest problem was the lock keeper on the EA lock off the Ouse who declared we were too long and wouldn't let us into the lock - it some persuading to actually get him to try! Oh and the weed........we bow hauled the last bit up to the arm at Melbourne, it was quicker. We came over the L&L on the same trip and Bingley sticks in my mind as having shorter chambers than all of the supposedly 58' max. length locks we went through, including the Ure Navigation. I don't know about the Ripon Canal as it was derelict at the time.

One of those boats lasted in our fleet until 2017 (James Brindley, later little Gem) and we've still got one of the others, although it's a bit like the proverbial axe now!

Surprised no-one has mentioned Pooley Hall yet, or if you don't want to model the pithead but do want to run a Garratt, Baddesley!

They couldn't, but they have (in the last week) both now managed to get booked flights home. One boat will be back by then end of today, the other by next weekend.

We had several work flats with steel cabins that are no more than tool stores (so have nothing in them) and they were also BSS exempt. On the advice of our independent BSS examiner we filled in the declaration that the boat didn't "require a BSS for the following reasons" (or words to that effect) and it was accepted by CRT. I presume because as there is no source of ignition there's no need to worry about extinguishers, means of escape etc.

I agree the lettering looks the right shape to Chertsey. Given the condition of the paintwork it's certainly not recent, so date to the early 50s? Does anyone know who had Chertsey then, and which butties she was paired with? That might rule her in our out. The engine room slides don't look unusual to me. Coincidentally there's a picture elsewhere on the forum of Chertsey (presumably as built) which shows the slides well.

Sadly not here - we're seeing far more people than usual for the time of year. At some points the towingpath has looked like Sunday afternoon in August with walkers, dog walkers, cyclists, loony cyclists, people coming to feed the ducks and even a motorbike. I think the slight drop today probably has more to do with the temperature. The interesting bit to me is that most are new faces - we know the regular walkers and they've pretty well all disappeared.

So the cabin sign writing is curved, and has too many letters to be GUCCCo. I think I can see an "ER___S" on the side but I may have been staring at it for too long. The lining looks like GU wartime livery though, so how many boats were painted in that livery with but with British Waterways on the side? I think the captain is in the hold looking at the camera, his wife is in the butty hatch, daughter on the motor and younger son(?) on the gunwale.

I'm pretty sure it's Torksey - the low wing wall and higher gates are are a match, also if you enlarge and look behind the second post from the right you can make out the paddle gear. Very Humber looking boat too. Update: Case closed I think - click the link and scroll down the page a bit - the building with the dormer windows can clearly be seen. https://www.gainsboroughheritage.co.uk/trentside-memories-new-publication-available-now/

For the record, we had five boats out prior to this weekend, all sent out before any boating restrictions or even pub closures were in place. Two of those have now returned. A third (out since the beginning of February) was at Cropredy this morning and will be back by Thursday evening. The remaining two are crewed by entirely unrelated couples from New Zealand who currently have nowhere else to go. As of this morning they are mulling over whether to return to base and live here for the next few months or hunker down where they are (one of which is a fair way north having already been out for a while), which will depend on the likelihood of continued availability of essential services where they are vs. how much grief they will get from people jumping to conclusions if they boat back. I note that here today there are still a number of private boats moving too but no one complaining about that, and forgive me if this sounds bitter, but I expect there'll be a thread on here soon complaining that all the boatyards are shut and how dare we as we're an essential service, probably started by the same people who normally post advice on avoiding boatyards at all costs as they're too expensive. Rant over Incidentally, if anyone needs fuel round here, I spoke with Rue at Armada Boat Hire this morning and he's going to stay open for fuel for the foreseeable, and if it gets to a point where he's unable to continue we'll pick up the baton.

The fact the OP says the engine sounds lovely and smooth when it's running concerns me. A properly timed indirect engine of that era should have a good diesel "knock". So assuming decent compression then the pump timing could be retarded, quite possibly as the result of a worn timing chain. 1.5's are also quite marginal on cranking speed, so make the sure the starter's not lazy. Both of those observations are irrelevant if the time taken for smoke to appear out of the exhaust is excessive though. Finally, most BMC's are on at least their 2nd rebuild by now, and the pumps are seldom reconditioned. If it's lucky it might have had a £300 overhaul (which will be not much more than a seal kit, trust me) at some point and the first thing that suffers on CAV rotary pumps when they're tired is the injection pressure at cranking speed. The downside is we're seeing pumps so tired now that just the parts needed have been over £1000.

Any (affordable) suggestions as to how/where and who to run this campaign so it will be seen (and believed) by the general public gratefully received. IMO the trade doesn't really have an effective body to represent it anymore, and there's only two big booking agents now, neither of which I suspect have the resource to spend on a big national advertising campaign. I think the greatest factor putting people off booking is that they of don't know whether or not they might be ill at the time of their holiday, plus of course we can't guarantee the person on the boat before wasn't a carrier, or that one of the staff won't get it and we'll all be quarantined etc. etc. At any point when there's a big unknown (2008 crash, Brexit vote, foot & mouth) the first thing people do is stop thinking about holidays. Everyone's cash flow will be based around "surviving the winter" and now is when things should get moving again. The firms that have other income streams (moorings, repair facilities) and who aren't covered by their business interruption insurance are probably best off just hunkering down and weathering it, anyone without those fall backs is probably already in trouble and I feel for them.

Which is one of the many reasons why the towing hook on the tug will have a quick release. My grandfather had a near miss in WW2 towing a barge across the bay of Bengal under cover of darkness. He came on watch before dawn as was surprised and alarmed that they had not traveled as far as he expected. A quick investigation revealed that they barge had sunk (fortunately in water considerably shallower than the length of the tow line) and they had been going nowhere for some time but none of the crew had noticed.

I'd admire the skill and patience a lot more if it had been accompanied by research. To use your. analogy, I suggest the design of the free lance model would have to be as follows: Fitted with a brass safety valve and bonnet and painted maroon, but with sunshine style "N E" lettering, have Walchaerts valve gear on one side, Stephenson on the other, and Gresley for the middle cylinder, be a 4-6-4 (numbered 111 of course) with square box pok wheels and a diesel filler instead of safety valves. Not to mention the brake van for a tender, buckeye coupler and cow catcher to finish of this charming british model from the WW2 era - and it would be ripped to bits on any model railway forum I know of, but they'd probably like the boat! Right, off to do a spot of scratch building ? Anyone know where I can buy a copper capped triple chimney in 4mm scale?

I don't think that was built by a boatman - whilst the hull proportions were often awry they were sticklers for working details right and there's so much wrong with that - t stud on the bow, deckboard/cratch, mast in the wrong place, pigeon box on a butty, garish paintwork etc. Methinks it was built by someone who'd seen more Rosie & Jim than Jam 'ole.

As I type this I'm being held up by a 49 year old 1/4" plate bottom which has never seen a lick of paint, and passed its last survey with flying colours. It is not however a through bilge! Age is not the defining factor and I'm not sure that modern steel and paint is better - there are still one or two GU boats out there with their original bottoms which are now knocking on 85 years old. Local conditions, stray volts and internal dryness are significant factors IMHO. Steel is certainly very variable. I have six boats from the same shell builder all built between 87 and 89, plus another from the same builder which we built for a private customer and have always maintained. They have been treated the same in terms of paint systems etc, and five of them are still in excellent condition - two of the hireboats however have had to have significant amounts of steelwork as they seem to have been built out of recycled Austin Allegros.

If the ones we see here for blacking are indicative of the general standard then the bad jobs are few and far between, no doubt because of competent oversight by the hull surveyor who will have specified the scope of the work in the survey that led to remedial works being deemed necessary. At the end of the day, it's the surveyor that signs it off, and that oversight should include checking downflooding heights etc. That said, bad jobs do exist - the most memorable for me was when a gentleman booking his boat in for blacking asked if we could "re-do the silicone" while the boat was on the slip. I had not a clue what he was on about, and he got quite impatient until it dawned on me (and I still didn't believe it until I saw it) that the above water line welds were not continuous, and between the tacks it had been siliconed - no word of a lie. Worse still he'd paid good money for the boat on the basis of a recent survey provided by the vendor which confirmed that all the work required to the hull had been carried out to a good standard. That surveyor went out of business rather than answer to his proffessional body for that one, and as the survey was in the name of the previous owner, the unfortunate new owner had to spend a lot of money having it all cut off and re-done at his own expense..

It was said partly tongue in cheek - the serious point is that the sort of weights people routinely put on cabin tops (which the boats were never designed to accommodate) seemingly without consequence, are far more significant to a vessel's stability characteristics than overplating.

That's a downflooding issue though, and what I'd like to know is what the freeboard of that vent was in the first place? For three people to put the stern down by 65mm I'd suggest that it must have also been a very short boat. I'll stand three people on our 32' day boat next week and measure. On a sixty footer, assuming 6mm thick overplate of baseplate and hullsides up to 500mm you are adding about 2300kg. I don't think the article factors in how much weight the boat will have lost since built - presumably if it needs overplating (rather than pit welding) then a significant mass will have ..er...dissolved. I don't know if anyone has ever tried to work that out, or indeed weighed what they've swept up off the floor after the baseplate has been cleaned off, but how's 500kg for a starting point? We have had overplated, boats from 34' to 60' which have not sat noticeably lower in the water, nor have we had to raise anything other than a weedhatch on one boat which was already marginal. If necessary, removal of ballast to compensate should be a viable option in most cases.

The problem with most of that is that the theory isn't backed up by practice. 1: True, but not by an amount to cause concern in any case I have yet come across. 2: Potentially, but lets worry about all the coal and logs on the coachroof first eh? Also, assuming the weight of steel added to the baseplate is greater than the footings then it won't apply will it? 3: Yes, but move the bags of coal (see above) 4: Take the coal off the roof altogether or lift the floor and take some ballast out if the boat is significantly deeper in the water. (Be careful how much coal you back up there afterwards though...) 5: Certainly can be an issue on dutch barges, but not on modern narrowboats where I would argue that the framing isn't vital to the structural integrity anyway. Decent overplating always has plug welds to support the plating. There are cleverer ways of doing it with short sheets and multiple tranverse welds too. 6: See point 5 7: Assuming the original platework is not holed, and the new welds are not porous, then there's no oxygen in there for corrosion to continue, surely? Brinklow Boats posted some pictures of a baseplate overplate they cut off a while back and the inside face of the overplate was still immaculate) That said, given the option I'd always prefer to cut out and let in because it's the right thing to do (although potentially you could get issues that way too with weld stress) but it is by no means the only option.