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Rain on 't Rochdale


Theo

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Cats and dogs it is and has been for most of the afternoon.  There was lots of rain last night, too.  The summit pound is weiring over E and W locks.  We are moored below lock 44 because, although we are not up to schedule, we decided that it was just too wet to go on.

 

On the way east we were inconveniently short of water. Now, on the way west, there is too much.  Other canals seem to have much better water management.  What different about the Rochdale?

 

 

Edited by Theo
Punchewayshun
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Thats the Rochdale.

One time we went from Tod to the summit and spent ages finding water to fill empty pounds, and just a couple of locks up had to wait to run water off before we could safely get through the locks.

Its a high canal so always struggled with water, then the owners sold off the reservoirs (the railway company owned the canal at the time but its more fun to blame CRT) so a natural shortage of water, but it runs down a very tight valley that floods very easily so sometimes it has much too much water.

Lots and lots of locks with short pounds complicates things.

 

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

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2 minutes ago, frangar said:

We are by Marple Aqueduct...stayed tied up today after getting a tad soggy yesterday...even the ducks look fed up

here...heading to the Huddersfield tomorrow...still at least the pounds should be full!  

And in Standedge Tunnel you will be out of the rain.

 

 

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11 hours ago, dmr said:

Thats the Rochdale.

One time we went from Tod to the summit and spent ages finding water to fill empty pounds, and just a couple of locks up had to wait to run water off before we could safely get through the locks.

Its a high canal so always struggled with water, then the owners sold off the reservoirs (the railway company owned the canal at the time but its more fun to blame CRT) so a natural shortage of water, but it runs down a very tight valley that floods very easily so sometimes it has much too much water.

Lots and lots of locks with short pounds complicates things.

 

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

The Rochdale was always an independent canal, and railways had no influence on the sale of the reservoirs. It was just that traffic had almost ceased and water was needed by local authorities.

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Isnt it one of the few canals where they were sensible enough/had learnt enough to make every lock the same rise? So it should have fairly good management of water from pound to pound provided there is enough coming from reservoirs...? I know the problem with the final 9 locks through Manchester is a lack of bywashes.

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32 minutes ago, Dave123 said:

Isnt it one of the few canals where they were sensible enough/had learnt enough to make every lock the same rise? So it should have fairly good management of water from pound to pound provided there is enough coming from reservoirs...? I know the problem with the final 9 locks through Manchester is a lack of bywashes.

The best design is to have the rise reduce as you descend, as this allows for leakage and evaporation over the length of a canal. The early locks on the Rochdale, in Yorkshire and the Manchester nine, used airholes above the ground paddles which acted as an overflow and fed into the ground paddle tunnels behind the paddles. The bottom gates were slightly higher than the upper gates, with any excess water flowing through the airholes at the upper end of the lock, which filled the chamber and then flowed over the bottom gates, though in some cases there were airholes on bottom ground paddles. This kept the chambers full and the bottom gates wet, which was considered the best way for maintaining the structures. There are problems with this system, which is found on a number of canals, with the airholes becoming blocked by rubbish, which is why they were often replaced by conventional byewashes.

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2 hours ago, Pluto said:

The best design is to have the rise reduce as you descend, as this allows for leakage and evaporation over the length of a canal. The early locks on the Rochdale, in Yorkshire and the Manchester nine, used airholes above the ground paddles which acted as an overflow and fed into the ground paddle tunnels behind the paddles. The bottom gates were slightly higher than the upper gates, with any excess water flowing through the airholes at the upper end of the lock, which filled the chamber and then flowed over the bottom gates, though in some cases there were airholes on bottom ground paddles. This kept the chambers full and the bottom gates wet, which was considered the best way for maintaining the structures. There are problems with this system, which is found on a number of canals, with the airholes becoming blocked by rubbish, which is why they were often replaced by conventional byewashes.

Now that's interesting.

 

I have read that the Shropshire Union has the deeper locks at the lower levels.  It wasn't explained but I rationalised this by assuming that there is a gradual accumulation of water as you go down the locks.  This was from diverted steams etc.

 

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It is very unusual to have locks of similar fall, or decreasing fall working away from the summit. This is a graph showing lock falls on the L&LC in 1887. The problem withg water supply caused by the falls on Bingley are evident, with these locks being the deepest on the canal, as is that for River Lock, where the basin had to have water back-pumped. The variations on Wigan flight are caused by subsidence, with the top lock at this time having a fall of 15 feet 6 inches. Falls at Wigan were equalised to some extent on several occasions to overcome water supply problems caused by subsidence.

lock falls.jpg

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7 hours ago, Pluto said:

There were originally eight, as the 1913 map shows, with seven being sold in 1923.

P9152274.jpg

The big resevoir below Littleborough must be Holingworth which was also a summit feeder but this was done with a steam pump to raise the water to summit level. I think this engine was demolished in 1910 but some of the feeder leat is still very east to spot.

There is also a small feeder channel at the other end of the summit pound but not sure were it comes from, will try to investigate further when we get back on the Rochdale this winter.

 

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

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1 hour ago, larrysanders said:

who were the reservoirs sold off to?  did the regional water authorities buy them?

 

There were no regional water authorities in 1923. I think they were transferred to Rochdale Corporation, and later transferred to the water authorities along with all other local authority water assets in 1974. And then got privatised.

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