Lock depths on The Rochdale?

[alan_fincher]

32 minutes ago, dmr said:

......just been in the Samual Barlow.

 

.............Dave

So have we!

[dmr]

4 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

So have we!

Didn't recognise you     we have met before, at the CRT launch event in Birmingham, all a long time ago now.

 

............Dave

[alan_fincher]

1 minute ago, dmr said:

Didn't recognise you     we have met before, at the CRT launch event in Birmingham, all a long time ago now.

 

............Dave

Yes indeed - a very long time ago!

 

All through the journey we have had various people on the tow-path or on other boats yell across to us things like  "so you finally made it off the Rochdale then!" or "Haven't you got Sickle with you?".
 

Of course many of  them I have recognised, even if I couldn't always put a name to them.

Others I have simply not been able to work out who they are, (with my apologies to anybody reading this who may be one of those people!).
 

I'm not great with faces, but my real issue is when I see them out of their usual context and/or at an unexpected location!

[Pluto]

13 hours ago, dmr said:

So were some of the "short" gates actually installed and used? I have read that this never happened though I suspect that a lot of history is based on a sort of Chinese whispers rather than "first hand" knowledge. Tuel Lane has two sets of bottom gates and the lock keeper ashed up the longer gates ready for us to go through .

 

The pound above Appley lock is quite long so I am surprised there were problems, but I still find it hard to visualise just how busy that canal was.

 

................Dave

It is always difficult to be certain, but I seem to recall when I read the minutes that there was a committee decision not to use intermediate gates.

 

On Appley, it is not about the length of pound, but about the supply. From 1774, when the canal opened, it only went as far as Dean Lock, where boats then entered the Douglas through a lock still visible, though closed circa 1900, to continue on to Wigan. The basin with the warehouses at Wigan was actually built by the Douglas Navigation and opened in 1742. With a water supply direct from the river at Dean - the supply now comes in below Appley Lock following the River Authority lowering the weir at Appley in 1937 - the 12 foot lock at Appley was not a problem to supply. However, when the canal was extended to Wigan in 1782, the water supply came via the locks above Wigan, Hell Meadow and Crook - Crook was closed and Pagefield built to cope with subsidence circa 1910. With a water supply now coming from shallower locks, the deep lock started to cause problems with water usage, so the two shallow locks were built to overcome this. In times of drought, only the shallow locks were used to save water. The canal was pretty busy as over one and a quarter million tons of coal were sent annually to Liverpool at one time, with half a million annually still being sent after the 2WW.