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Ironside's


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Hi,, any body know anything about the boat ,,Ironside's,, ?? Advertised on Apollo duck at long port brokerage 

Seams it may have some history  and I,m looking at purchasing it  , but would love to know more about it before I commit to it and  would like to speak with the owner  to get honest answers  the brokers  ton,t help much 

 

 Many thanks

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This?

https://m.apolloduck.com/boat/narrow-boats-traditional/603575

Ad says its the back end of LMS station boat Tebay facing backwards with a new motor stern and cabin. Its not clear whether the BM1054 is fully fitted - there's no mention of a prop or controls. And a BM1054 is definitely on the large size for a 57 ft boat.

 

This is the other half

https://hnbc.org.uk/boats/tebay

Edited by David Mack
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22 minutes ago, David Mack said:

This?

https://m.apolloduck.com/boat/narrow-boats-traditional/603575

Ad says its the back end of LMS station boat Tebay facing backwards with a new motor stern and cabin. Its not clear whether the BM1054 is fully fitted - there's no mention of a prop or controls. And a BM1054 is definitely on the large size for a 57 ft boat.

 

This is the other half

https://hnbc.org.uk/boats/tebay

Thank you that's very interesting , so its only half the original boat , !!! Mmm, making me think £28,000 is way to much money for it    as its not as original as I first believed 

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2 hours ago, David Mack said:

This?

https://m.apolloduck.com/boat/narrow-boats-traditional/603575

Ad says its the back end of LMS station boat Tebay facing backwards with a new motor stern and cabin. Its not clear whether the BM1054 is fully fitted - there's no mention of a prop or controls. And a BM1054 is definitely on the large size for a 57 ft boat.

 

This is the other half

https://hnbc.org.uk/boats/tebay

It does say finished to a running vessel.

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8 hours ago, Paul&Sam said:

Where has the kelvin engine gone? 

 

7 hours ago, Spanners said:

Was the kelvin in ,Ironside's,, I thought it was in ,tebay,,

 

2 hours ago, Paul&Sam said:

Was in Tebay, this would really be a steal if the kelvin was in there still.


AFAIK Tebay still has the Kelvin J3.  I seem to recall this was Kevin Whittle's own boat, wasn't it - presumably the engine wasput in fairly good order when it was?

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On 09/08/2019 at 09:16, alan_fincher said:

 

 


AFAIK Tebay still has the Kelvin J3.  I seem to recall this was Kevin Whittle's own boat, wasn't it - presumably the engine wasput in fairly good order when it was?

I don't,t know who,s boat it was its at a brokers and they are reluctant to say who owns it , things are developing on my hunt for a suitable project boat ,, at a reasonable cost ,, and I will only deal with reasonable honest folk ,  so I,m looking at a few this week and one will be a complete build from a shell ,

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1 hour ago, Spanners said:

I don't,t know who,s boat it was its at a brokers and they are reluctant to say who owns it , things are developing on my hunt for a suitable project boat ,, at a reasonable cost ,, and I will only deal with reasonable honest folk ,  so I,m looking at a few this week and one will be a complete build from a shell ,

On Wednesday and Thursday it appeared you were about to buy the 'reproduction' Bridgewater Tug shell at Stretton, so presumably this did not work out if you are looking at a few other boats this week.

 

 

Finding a boat that suits is usually a prolonged process, unless you are very lucky and stumble across a suitable candidate early in your search :captain:

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36 minutes ago, pete harrison said:

On Wednesday and Thursday it appeared you were about to buy the 'reproduction' Bridgewater Tug shell at Stretton, so presumably this did not work out if you are looking at a few other boats this week.

 

 

Finding a boat that suits is usually a prolonged process, unless you are very lucky and stumble across a suitable candidate early in your search :captain:

That is still  in the forefront , I will  most likely go ahead ,, just costing it out and checking what else is about  , I,v had boats before as I worked as a marine engineer on the canal system. Mostly engine work and repairs  , refurbished project boats but never started with a complete shell for myself 

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On 09/08/2019 at 06:43, Paul&Sam said:

Was in Tebay, this would really be a steal if the kelvin was in there still.

The kelvin is still in Tebay, which was indeed K. Whittles boat for a few years. Tebay isn’t for sale though, Ironsides is, which never had a Kelvin. 

Ironsides does however have the arse end of the original Tebay as it’s bow. 

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38 minutes ago, noddyboater said:

The kelvin is still in Tebay, which was indeed K. Whittles boat for a few years. Tebay isn’t for sale though, Ironsides is, which never had a Kelvin. 

Ironsides does however have the arse end of the original Tebay as it’s bow. 

 

13 minutes ago, pete harrison said:

Is this definitely the original stern of TEBAY or is this hearsay and just a claim of the current advert on Apollo Duck :captain:

 

I can't recall where, but I'm sure one source says that the fate of "Tebay's" stern end was unknown.

According to the National Historic Ships site....
 

Quote

After years of service conveying coal for the London Midland & Scottish Railway she was transferred to British Waterways and cut down to 36ft and used as a mess boat for a dredging gang.


If so, a lot of the current "Tebay" isn't even original "Tebay".

Can you vouch for the accuracy, (or inaccuracy) of any of this, please, Pete?

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8 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

If so, a lot of the current "Tebay" isn't even original "Tebay".


Can you vouch for the accuracy, (or inaccuracy) of any of this, please, Pete?

Not with any conviction as these L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' are a nightmare, not helped by popular opinion and the publication of a badly researched article by an archivist a few years ago. I have concerns with the link between IRONSIDES and the stern of TEBAY as I have also read a connection with IRONSIDES and the L.M.S.R. 'Station Boat; stern that formed part of the maintenance boat HERON - all sounds a bit like guess work to me in an attempt to give IRONSIDES some tangible history.

 

I am certain though that these L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' were not coal carriers as there predominant trade was in traffic to interchange basins locally within the Black Country.

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11 minutes ago, pete harrison said:

Not with any conviction as these L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' are a nightmare, not helped by popular opinion and the publication of a badly researched article by an archivist a few years ago. I have concerns with the link between IRONSIDES and the stern of TEBAY as I have also read a connection with IRONSIDES and the L.M.S.R. 'Station Boat; stern that formed part of the maintenance boat HERON - all sounds a bit like guess work to me in an attempt to give IRONSIDES some tangible history.

 

I am certain though that these L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' were not coal carriers as there predominant trade was in traffic to interchange basins locally within the Black Country.

Sounds like Ironside's is an unknown miss match  , to be avoided ,,  I think I maybe much better off doing the Bridgewater tug  shell  and putting a nice  classic engine in it

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16 minutes ago, Spanners said:

Sounds like Ironside's is an unknown miss match  , to be avoided ,,  I think I maybe much better off doing the Bridgewater tug  shell  and putting a nice  classic engine in it

I would not necessarily say IRONSIDES is to be avoided but the new owner will need to accept it for what it is, and it undoubtedly has the stern of an L.M.S.R. 'Station Boat' for a fore end. Having said that it would not make my ideal boat :captain:

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From the information given in the advert (which is a bit thin on the ground) I would say that Ironsides would certainly be worth having a look at. If the work that has been done has been done well and the buyer is capable of finishing it off themselves then it would make a nice boat. Whether the price is right or not is hard to judge without seeing the quality of the work done but there can often be some wriggle room in the negotiations.

It could be that some more digging needs to be done which may or may not throw up some provenance of what the original stern is from, even without a name it does have a bit of history in there and to me that is always going to be preferable to many of the modern washer Joshers - but, at the end of the day it is all about personal preference and what is important to the person who is parting with the cash.

 

Interestingly, because Spanners is a friend of a friend of ours I had been asking over on Facebook about info on Ironsides but because I was reading a personal message and trying to type on my phone whle a passenger in a car on a twisty round I got the wrong end of the stick and thought it was Tebay that was being asked about. This meant that through mutual friends I ended up in conversation with Tebay's current owner. He happened to mention that he had been told by someone that our Delhi's front end was Tebay's original stern. He said that the front end of Tebay can be traced back to 1929 so he was certain about that.

 

Well I am happy enough that the front end of Delhi's provenance is traceable back to 1930 so I explained that I didn't feel it was possible so maybe all the owners of bits of LMS boats need to get together and share what they have been told so we can all follow those whispers back to see if there is any shred of evidence to suggest there might be truth in it and by doing so perhaps quash a lot of the rumours. I will admit that I do recall seeing Tebay for sale and thinking how beautiful it looks and now when I follow that link to look at it I find I am looking at pictures of what could almost be Delhi's twin :)

 

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3 hours ago, cheshire~rose said:

so maybe all the owners of bits of LMS boats need to get together and share what they have been told so we can all follow those whispers back to see if there is any shred of evidence to suggest there might be truth in it and by doing so perhaps quash a lot of the rumours. 

Please make no mistake that there has been a phenomenal amount of effort put into sorting out the L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' by the best canal boat researchers of their time, including me if I am worthy of being counted. The problem is that these boats were not particularly desirable to most working boat enthusiasts (1960s - 1980s) and were generally seen as attractive looking but too small (in the side) and little more than a fancy B.C.N. day boat. Times move on and they are now quite desirable, but not in time to save the multitude of hull chopping and modification without the recording of what became what. With this new found desirability comes the quest for historical integrity where some form of original name or number is needed. For about half of the remaining L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' this is easy as they retain an identifying plate of some sort (B.C.N. gauge, builders or L.M.S.R. plate) or have been fortunate to have been tracked by enthusiasts / owners over the years to such an extent that their history is sound. Then there are all of those that have lost their plates (often pinched by enthusiasts from the 1960's onwards) or are cast aside offcuts of other conversions, let alone name changes and un-sympathetic rebuilds.

 

This leaves us nowadays with unidentified complete hulls, as well as unidentified fore ends and stern ends. Many of the people who cut these boats are no longer with us having moved on or passed away, and along with a new thirst for identifying these boats / bits of boats comes the internet and 'historic' boat websites full of poor research. Most of these boats were cut a long time ago and a combination of unidentifiable boats in the first place, Chinese whispers, popular opinion, probability / possibility / elimination when we don't know that some are correctly identified anyway and then fuelled by the internet all make things very difficult. I probably hold the most comprehensive records relating to L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' and their passage through time and I can not get anywhere near sorting them out - I tried about 15 years ago but the situation now is worse, and I have no intention of trying again.

 

There are several L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' that have been identified by one or all of the above and my own feeling is that too much history has been interfered with to positively identify all of the bits and pieces of these boats that are left. There is no doubt that these are attractive boats and the most important thing now is that their owners enjoy them for what they are, and whether identified or not. Personally I have a real problem when a name is attached to a boat in order to give it a history, especially if this I in order to give it desirability when for sale. It would be very interesting to know whether the stern that forms the fore end of IRONSIDES retains the B.C.N. gauge plate for TEBAY.

 

Much of the above also applies to B.C.N. day boats, as they have also seen their popularity grow in recent years along with a quest for original identification. 

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The one thing you can evidence is that ironsides is the back of a station boat going forwards. Less elegant than a station boat bow, but still a goodly chunk of old boat.

if you want a bit of old boat its now quite rare,  and interesting, but not overly valuable and unlikely to become so.

Its original name is almost irrelevant as they were day boats, with little or no long distance or family history, built as workhorses, but what pretty workhorses.

i miss my yarwoods station boat looks, form and function.

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18 minutes ago, roland elsdon said:

Its original name is almost irrelevant as they were day boats, with little or no long distance or family history, built as workhorses, but what pretty workhorses.

Of the 38 Yarwood built L.M.S.R. 'Station Boats' 6 were built as family type cabin boats, health registered at Wolverhampton and worked on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal. Unfortunately these 6 boats are undistinguishable from the open boats, although a couple have been tenuously 'identified' due to the remnants / makings of cabin frames - but of course it must be borne in mind that in the mid 1950's 'British Waterways; converted 12 of these boats into family boats for their North Western Division carrying fleet, and Willow Wren Canal Carrying Company also had a couple, but the latter 2 are easily accounted for (as are some of the 'British Waterways; conversions) :captain:

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One hopes that those people cutting and shutting boats today are keeping records of what is what for the sake of future researchers.

BCN plates and builders plates can be and almost certainly have been moved, particularly by those with a profit in mind. 

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1 minute ago, Spanners said:

When I  started this thread I honestly thought that somebody on here would know who actually owns  ,,Ironside's,, and I would be able to contact them

Of course somebody knows who the owner is, but in these days of Data Protection / G.D.P.R. Regulations a public Forum is not the place to disclose this information.

 

If you are serious about pursuing IRONSIDES then I would recommend using the broker involved as I am sure any questions you have they will relay to the seller - and the seller has probably chosen to sell though a broker so as not to be hassled too much :captain:

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