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When did bridge numbering start on canals?


Joseph

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23 hours ago, haggis said:

The bridges are numbered on the Glasgow and Edinburgh Union canal and on the Forth and Clyde canal in Scotland but I have no idea when they were numbered! I "think" the bridges on the Crinan canal also have numbers but I am not sure about the Caledonian and Crinan

 

haggis

The Union Canal ones must be original, as they are carved into the keystones of the bridges. 

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17 minutes ago, Iain_S said:

The Union Canal ones must be original, as they are carved into the keystones of the bridges. 

No, it's just as Voltaire suggests in your tag line, Scottish vandals are more civilised.

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10 minutes ago, Pluto said:

No, it's just as Voltaire suggests in your tag line, Scottish vandals are more civilised.

Nah, they're not that good! The numbers are carved on the keystone on what is a different shaped stone to the rest of the bridge. I had forgotten how our bridge numbers appear. 

 

haggis

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Bridge numbering is a fairly well established practice, dating to at least the 1930's widening of the Warwick canals as part of the GU improvements.   It confused me for a while as to why the Oxford canal towpath  bridge at Wigrams Turn/Napton Jn.  over the widened Warwick and Napton is numbered 17 when it was clearly the first bridge on the Warwick to Napton GU element.  Since then I have counted the bridges between Braunston Turn and Wigrams, to discover there were 16 of them (not all surviving).  So, the GU having come to some maintenance and improvement arrangement with the Oxford to allow for the GU to widen and pile etc, included the Braunston to Napton bridges in its management planning, gave the "acquired"  bridges numbers and then re-numbered the two Warwick canals in a system zero based at  Braunston Turn.  All in the 1930's.

 

N

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4 hours ago, BEngo said:

Bridge numbering is a fairly well established practice, dating to at least the 1930's widening of the Warwick canals as part of the GU improvements.   It confused me for a while as to why the Oxford canal towpath  bridge at Wigrams Turn/Napton Jn.  over the widened Warwick and Napton is numbered 17 when it was clearly the first bridge on the Warwick to Napton GU element.  Since then I have counted the bridges between Braunston Turn and Wigrams, to discover there were 16 of them (not all surviving).  So, the GU having come to some maintenance and improvement arrangement with the Oxford to allow for the GU to widen and pile etc, included the Braunston to Napton bridges in its management planning, gave the "acquired"  bridges numbers and then re-numbered the two Warwick canals in a system zero based at  Braunston Turn.  All in the 1930's.

 

N

Good spot. I’ve known for about 40 years that the bridge at Napton Jn was no. 17 but I’ve never considered why. Is that counted from Braunston stop rather than the Turn? The bridge between the Stop and the Turn of course bears an OCC number since the GJC never went beyond the Stop.

 

You’ve also pointed out the answer to a question I have asked in discussions about wide beams on the north Oxford which is what makes the section from Braunston to Napton a wide canal while north of Braunston isn’t regarded as such. The answer is the work undertaken as part of the GUCC improvements in the 1930s. Something I noted when I last travelled that section.

 

JP

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You are right.  The bridge count is from the stop at Braunston, not from the junction .  It includes both the bridges over the turn, but not apparently OCC bridge 92, which I think is the bridge  at the modern marina entrance.

 

N

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@Joseph,

 

In response to your question about how canals were managed the need for unique identification for individual structures comes from engineering rather operational needs.

 

In any canal company - and in CRT today - someone had the accountability to ensure that each bridge was fit for purpose and that required an inspection regime, calculations of load carrying capability and a schedule of maintenance works necessary to maintain fitness. This requires a number of records, calculations and schedules to be held by the canal company engineers so they needed unique identifiers for each structure even if for no other purpose than administration i.e. being able to maintain a register of their accumulated knowledge in a robust records system.

 

On the railways bridges were numbered from the outset - a practice quite possibly taken from canals - and even to this day the alpha-numerical reference system by which the rail network is described for engineering purposes is designed to ensure that there is no repetition of line reference and bridge number. I expect CRT have a similar system.

 

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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The numbering of the Oxford Canal bridges are shown on a distance table at the TNA, which is pre 1800. In those days the bridges on the loops were on the main line.

 

The BCN had names, and sometimes these names changed. Early bridges had a date in roman numerals

 

BCN constituent companies, may need further investigation. A good source of early names are the Cotterill maps at the Waterways Archives, Ellesmere Port, but these are 1860's.

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On the Rochdale Canal the bridges and locks are numbered from different ends, Lock 1 in Sowerby, Bridge 1 in Manchester. They match at lock 44, just below my house on the Littleborough to Summit stretch. 

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I have a copy of a notebook which has a detailed map of the canal drawn by a canal employee and possibly dating from around 1900. The locks are number consecutively from Sowerby Bridge, and the bridges are all named. I know that some people use locks numbered east and west, but that seems to be a modern alternative. The pages with summit lock west are below. 

52:3 lock 37:38.jpg

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On 10/01/2020 at 09:59, Jim Riley said:

On the Rochdale Canal the bridges and locks are numbered from different ends, Lock 1 in Sowerby, Bridge 1 in Manchester. They match at lock 44, just below my house on the Littleborough to Summit stretch. 

 

???

The bridges and locks are both numbered from 1 at the Sowerby Bridge end on the CRT maps, and on canalplan.

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One other issue that occurs to me is literacy/numeracy, ie how many canal employees in (say) 1790 or 1800 would be able to read bridge names and numbers? I don't  know what the level of adult literacy was at that time, clearly toll clerks would have been literate enough, and the engineers/overseers, but maybe not many more than that??   This article reports Edmund Burke saying in 1790 that only 80,000 people could be considered part of the English reading public, and notes that reading and writing rates were often very different.

 
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/download/18862/14652

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11 minutes ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

One other issue that occurs to me is literacy/numeracy, ie how many canal employees in (say) 1790 or 1800 would be able to read bridge names and numbers? I don't  know what the level of adult literacy was at that time, clearly toll clerks would have been literate enough, and the engineers/overseers, but maybe not many more than that??   This article reports Edmund Burke saying in 1790 that only 80,000 people could be considered part of the English reading public, and notes that reading and writing rates were often very different.

 
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/download/18862/14652

I always wondered that with all the mile and quarter mile markers, where they really for the boat men or for another reason. The boat men would know where they were as I am told they didn't use

Nicholsons.

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12 minutes ago, Scholar Gypsy said:

One other issue that occurs to me is literacy/numeracy, ie how many canal employees in (say) 1790 or 1800 would be able to read bridge names and numbers? I don't  know what the level of adult literacy was at that time, clearly toll clerks would have been literate enough, and the engineers/overseers, but maybe not many more than that??   This article reports Edmund Burke saying in 1790 that only 80,000 people could be considered part of the English reading public, and notes that reading and writing rates were often very different.

 
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/constellations/index.php/constellations/article/download/18862/14652

Do you have to be truly literate/numerate to be able to recognise basic numbers and count? I’d have thought not.

 

JP

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3 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I always wondered that with all the mile and quarter mile markers, where they really for the boat men or for another reason. The boat men would know where they were as I am told they didn't use

Nicholsons.

Probably used in managing the canal as local datums for measuring the precise location of features (including bridges!). That’s essentially why mile posts were (and to a degree still are) provided on railways. I wouldn’t expect a train driver to know the mileage they are at at any point in time to any great degree of accuracy but like working boaters they would know exactly where they were in relation to local landmarks and the paraphernalia of their environment.

 

They may have been a legal requirement; that’s certainly the case with railways.

 

JP

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1 hour ago, Captain Pegg said:

Do you have to be truly literate/numerate to be able to recognise basic numbers and count? I’d have thought not.

 

JP

The retired narrow boat captain I visit once said to me:

 

"Perhaps I can't read Ray, but I can count money."

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6 hours ago, Ray T said:

The retired narrow boat captain I visit once said to me:

 

"Perhaps I can't read Ray, but I can count money."

I've had the same comment from an old boater, he could work out how much you owed him pretty quickly.

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On 14/01/2020 at 09:38, ditchcrawler said:

I always wondered that with all the mile and quarter mile markers, where they really for the boat men or for another reason. The boat men would know where they were as I am told they didn't use

Nicholsons.

As I undrstand it, quarter mile posts are (were) a legal requirement, so that users could properly understand the toils being charged, which were by distance and material, rather than by lockage.
As to numbering its a fairly modern thing nearly, all structures were named, sometimes in groups as per flights of locks. The Bridgewater canal still only uses namaes for bridges. Modern casual users find this difficult.

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