antarmike

Being Pedantic shouldn't that be still with a Bolinder and/ or once again refitted with a Bolinder after having spent time with other engines??

The stem bars on Woolwich's are Cast steel, not cast iron. I presume this casting is in steel also.....Much stronger than Cast Iron. But looking at the whole thread, I see that has already been mentioned,,,

A pusher tug is tugging when it is slowing down the boat it was pushing,,,,,

GRIFFONS! (excuse me shouting but....) The BBMF Griffon powered Spitfires have both been modified from their original Griffon 66's to take an ex-Shackleton Griffon 58 engines with specially-manufactured reduction gear driving a single propeller. (This is now the standard power plant configuration on the BBMF Mk XIX Spitfires). So when you listen to the BBMF fly past in their PR's you are actually hearing a Shackleton's Griffon! Although some Griffon engined Spitfires were trialled with Contra rotating Propellers, none flew operationally because of Gearbox problems but these problems were eventually solved and late model Seafires where fitted with Griffon engines and Contra rotating props and used operationally. The Contra rotating prop improved their handling vastly. (but sadly not their looks!) At least one preserved Spitfire has been re-engineered to take an ex Shackleton Griffon Contra rotating prop arrangement.

I must get to a leighton re-union Thought it was a typo but to answer an earlier question it was Merlin Powered not Griffon engined. My understanding is that it was built with a Merlin XII but this has been replaced with a later Merlin 35. and whilst on the subject of Typo's Griffin referred to in original question should of course be Griffon. Rolls Royce engines of the period where mostly named after birds of prey, (Peregrine, Merlin, Kestrel, Vulture, Griffon, Condor, Eagle, Hawk, Goshawk, Buzzard, Falcon etc,) not mythical Greek winged creatures or legendary Arthurian Wizzards

I wasn't there and did not see the Spitfire but looking at the photo's it is painted as EB-G not EB-D. This is P7350 and as you say it is the oldest airworthy Spitfire in the world and the only Spitfire still flying to have actually fought in the Battle of Britain. Believed to be the 14th of 11,989 Spitfires built at the Castle Bromwich ‘shadow’ factory in Birmingham, ‘P7’ entered service in August 1940. After serving initially with 266 Squadron at Wittering and Hornchurch at the height of the Battle of Britain, it was one of 13 Mk IIa Spitfires that were then transferred to 603 (City of Edinburgh) AuxAF Squadron at Hornchurch on 17 October 1940, to replace the Squadron’s older Mk 1s. On 25 October 1940, whilst with 603 Squadron, ‘P7’ was damaged in a combat with German ME Bf 109s and by the subsequent forced landing. The aircraft was hit by cannon fire in the left wing and the pilot, Ludwik Martel (a Pole) was wounded by shrapnel in the left side of his body and legs. He fought the aircraft back down through cloud, in pain and fighting to stay conscious, and forced landed, wheels up, in a field near Hastings. Ludwik did not fly again until 6 December 1940. It was 1941 before ‘P7’ was operational again after repair at the No1 Civilian Repair Unit at Cowley, Oxford (run by Morris Motors). ‘P7’ subsequently served operationally with 616 Squadron at Tangmere and 64 Squadron at Hornchurch, flying on fighter sweeps over occupied France as Fighter Command went on the offensive in 1941. In April 1942 ‘P7’ was withdrawn from operational flying and relegated to support duties serving with the Central Gunnery School at Sutton Bridge and 57 OTU at Eshott, Northumberland, before ending its wartime career at 19 MU. During the War, ‘P7’ is believed to have suffered damage in three ‘Cat B’ flying accidents (at Hornchurch, Sutton Bridge and Eshott), being repaired each time. P7 now flies with BBMF but like most BBMF aircraft its paint scheme and identity represent a different aircraft. P7350 is currently presented as Spitfire Mk 1a N3162, of No 41 Squadron, coded ‘EB-G’, the aircraft flown by the top-scoring Battle of Britain fighter ace, Pilot Officer Eric Lock, on 5 September 1940, when he achieved 4 confirmed kills and one probable kill in a single day. I am pleased to say I have actually sat in the cockpit of this Spitfire!

width six foot ????????

OLDBURY STEERING & COAL CO.LIMITED (Registered No 00308393) Registered Office, TAT BANK WHARF, OLDBURY, WORCESTER, UNITED KINGDOM (is that on the Titford feeder????)

Bilster is one of the few Big Woolwich motors that did not get the extra guard below the top bend....and one of the few that didn't get the headlamp moved to the middle....yes that is Bilster.

Touche should have been a grocer.....

I think this is him

Found another shot of Lyra, Coming down to Leighton, somewhere around Milton Keynes, Bilster laden with best "washed Bagworth" coal tows Ex Stewart and Lloyds day boat with "Coalite" and Lyra again with "washed Bagworth" Lyra is being steered by Andy Farqueson, but I can't remember who drew short straw and got the day boat without any Cabin. (it was fookin cold. Second shot "around" Fenny ??? possibly Graham steering the day boat, can't remember his last name, ran a fuel/oil delivery boat for a bit and had something to do with Eel Pie Island on the Thames????? copyright Mike Fincher

When I knew the boat in the seventies, it was carrying coal regularly, and it is true that there was a bad section on the bottoms. Around one knee the bolts through the knee that where supposed to go through the Elm, had pulled, consequently at this knee a thin steel plate had been slipped between the knee and the bottom, and it was screwed down around the edges to sounder Elm, away from the rotten patch. Consequently this knee just rested on the steel plate and wasn't actually fixed to the Elm. The cabin was rotten, in fact Pete and I took the cabin off, and we got as far as buying the steel to replicate a riveted cabin, but as my brother says, Pete moved onto other things and the cabin was never built. First two pictures show Lyra loaded at Leighton Linslade, the third shot is of me with Bilster taking Lyra (minus cabin) to meet new owners at Bedworth, locking up the Thames in the company of Aster and Lucy. Copyright Mike Fincher

Quite a lot, it is one of the "Kingfisher" / " Grebe" day trip boats.... It is just south of Cooks Wharf. (which doesn't have an apostrophe) ...the other side of the "Duke of Wellington" road bridge, just after the railway crossing....which is what "around" means, i.e. in the area of..... Presumably Pitstone Wharf was named as such in the seventies, but to be honest, I have never heard of it, no one ever used it, no faclities where there, and no one ever referred to it as such. DDBC was further down from where this shot was taken and from my, probably defective,memory the slow down sign was some distance before the moorings started....I was naming the location in terms of names and facilities in use at the time... certainly as you can see Pistone wharf is very near the Railway crossing

copyright Mike Fincher. End of an Era, When Collier Brothers folded the coal business at Leighton, brother Pete bought Lyra. If my chronology is correct Bilster was stuck the wrong side of a tunnel collapse, so I could not fetch Lyra back to the Cowroast so Jason, with Stamford, towed Lyra to Cowroast instead and I steered the butty. On the Towpath at Linslade is Tim Collier's Moggy, we used to deliver coal with, the other two shots are going up Maffas and around the Railway crossing below Ivinghoe...Sorry they are lousy photo's. Probably a working day so Pete was Lock keeping or on the length.....Lyra was the last of the Collier - Leighton based coal boats to leave.

here

I am a 1954 model, egg rationing ended in 1953...

My dad's one he brought back from the war as aluminium because my mum used to make me scrambled eggs in it and I had to wash it out afterwards .... IWM says initially made of tinned metal (I think they mean steel) but later they were aluminium (picture shows aluminium) see picture 13 of 14 here "aluminium mess cans" and on ebay 1941 dated without wired/rolled top edge and rivetted not solderd handle bracket,so therefore aluminium type and one steel and one aluminium both dated 1945 I need to get out more....

As far as I know aluminium was hardly used in wartime munitions. Aluminium powder can be used to make explosives (Torpex was 18% Aluminium powder) but explosive production was in Royal ordnance factories and The ROF did not have a facility any where near Marsworth) and generally any ammunition is made as heavy as possible to create the maximum impact and damage. Cartridge cases are exclusively Brass. Although small arms use light alloys these days this is not true of wartime weapons. During the war Aluminium was always a difficult material to source in the UK and virtually all Aluminium went into aircraft production, including the millions of rivets that held them together. The only use of aluminium in munitions (weapons in general) I can think of apart from Aircraft production was scales on range finders and the like on 25 Pounders and the 5.5" Field gun and the soldiers mess cans and motor bike engines. I'll still go with Round Aluminium bars destined for "Rivets" Edit "I'll concede aluminium foil for window chaff, and add to the use in explosives, Thermite, used in the standard British 4lb incendiary bomb."

Also known locally as "Bif & Tub" which has a nice ring to it. Company History Quote from Company History "During the build up to the First World War the company expanded rapidly producing millions of number 8 and 9 oval head rivets for use in harness and saddlery work for the cavalry. Tea chests were another continuous order as well as supplying rivets for vehicle tyre studs, gas masks and soldiers boots. All employees of the company were exempt from military service because of the extreme demand for rivets. ....... The Second World War also contributed to the growth of the company, being the major producer of aircraft rivets, working day and night and weekends year in year out. Luckily the factory escaped any damage during the five years of air raids." Unquote

Regarding the Buffer Depots, I was told by Jim Wallington, that during the war he regularly carried food down the Wendover Arm with Bilster, and the food was stored within the buildings at Little Tring Pumping station, and these buildings were requisitioned for the use of food storage. This seems odd if a much larger, purpose built facility was available only a few miles away. I am therefore not entirely sure the Buffer depot on the summit was actually a wartime structure. Photographs of known wartime buffer depots show the brickwork painted in camouflage. There is no such painting of the Tring Buffer depot. The Buffet depot scheme was greatly increased post war, to re-assure the public everything would be Okay after a Nuclear war and that Nuclear war was survivable and life would go on. Whilst acknowledging International Alloys were in Aylesbury it would seem they were Aluminium smelters and they processed scrap Aluminium to produce ingots for industry. Unless processed pure aluminium was going there for smelting and alloying into something more exotic (Duralumin, Hiduminium or their ilk) it seems far more likely that goods into International Alloys would be impure scrap (engines and the like along with the thousands and millions of surrendered cooking utensils given up by an eager populace believing these were required for Spitfire production) and the product leaving International Alloys would be ingots. The traffic seems to be in the wrong direction! It seems to me that a far more likely destination for Aluminium Bars (or maybe ingots) would be "The Bifurcated and Tubular Rivet Company". They were based, since 1910, in Mandeville Road, Aylesbury. Known to everyone locally just as "Rivets" it was once one of Aylesbury's largest employers and their products were much in demand for Aircaft Production. They were a major league supplier to the aircraft industry, in continuous production 24 hours a day 7 days a week throughout most of the war. And as such they were undoubtedly a large user of Aluminium in Aylesbury, and might be calling down stock as required from Marsworth. We are talking wartime, where satellite factories where set up everywhere, and production (and presumably raw goods) were located in as many diverse locations as possible to minimise the risk of lost production and damage to products caused by Luftwaffe bombing. It might have been deemed necessary as part of this plan to keep Raw Aluminium away from the processing factories, until actually needed. Since "Rivets" were not canalside the aluminium would have to be trans-shipped by road, so maybe Marsworth made as much sense as a transshipment point as Aylesbury basin. (Why Double lock a pair down the narrow arm, if at the end you still had to unload to lorry for final delivery to Mandeville Road? And especially so if it was an all woman crew who would have ended up bow hauling a laden Butty at times) The road journey from Marsworth would have been around ten miles rather than two from Aylesbury basin. If the end use was rivets, the stock was probably round bar, that would be drawn down through dies to achieve the stem diameter before heading, so it could be that the reference is to round bars rather than ingots. The book description of the cargo as "bars" makes perfect sense if this is the case.

I thought Bradshaws was a collection of Passenger timetables..... How does having passenger timetables help price competitive rates for a cargo business? I see the "principle places" document has a halfway spelling Of Berkhampstead/ Berkhamsted namely Berkhamstead. Berkhampstead, the older spelling, is incidentally still used and can be found for example in Berkhampstead Road, Amersham., And was on the wrought iron gates of "Berkhampstead gas works,when they where taken down in the 70's / Early 80's. Wiki, if it is to be believed, says the spelling Berkhamsted was adopted in 1937, so when the Butty was named the town still was Berkhampstead / Berkhamstead.

And does Ethiopia really sound like a heavenly body?

As a previous owner of Bilster I have tried to work out what went wrong, I think it is Peter Picked a Peck of Pickled Pepper...syndrome. Tongue twisters catch you out because there is repetition of similar sounds and the brain can't keep up and will slip in the wrong ending to a word. If a list was being transcribed someone might have read it out to someone else, The name immediately in front of Bilster is Bicester, I think in going down the list whoever read out the list similarly attached the name ending they had just used ""ster" on the end of Bilston by mistake. Everyone knows how to spell Galaxy. it is a simple word but whatever checks were in place that came out as Glaxy. Bilster could have been picked from a Map, Bradshaws, plan of the canal system, whatever as Bilston and still at the last transcription it ends up getting cocked up. Face it we have spell checkers on our computers and most of us still manage to post misspelled words from time to time!

Almost every? Does it have Ra, Argon, Ethiopia, Bargus or the craters such as Isis? It can't be that simple, Meteor, Comet, satellite would not appear on an astrological chart, nor would Zenith or Zodiac Woods built a prototype pair named Jupiter and Mars, The two production pairs they built were Pleione, Praesepe, Pleiades and Penelope. It has been suggested that H&W were allocated a letter range for the Towns as were Yarwoods. Did the boat builders have a say in the naming, I wonder a bit tongue in cheek if Woods named the first pair after planets, not stars, got told off for getting it wrong so they went for something a bit more esoteric next time!