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Figure of Three Locks Aerial Video


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Looks like the top lock is unscathed. The bottom lock looks relatively intact too. So makes me wonder why 12 months? 

The spoil in the pound belongs back on the river bank and a channel through the spoil below could be dredged reasonably quickly allowing restricted passage while they rebuild the by-wash.

 

I wonder how long it took the lads with shovels and wheel barrows to build it in the first place?

 

Edited by Midnight
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That was my reaction when I first saw photos. The lock seems to be undamaged (but presumably needs to be checked and maybe some minor repairs). So just dig out the material from the channel, put it back alongside the lock, and where the floodbank between the river and canal is partly washed out, and build a new bywash.  Thats an unexpected cost to CRT, but not that large, and could surely be completed in much less than 12-18 months.

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Why don’t you ask the big man himself as he and the rest of his crew are at south pennie boat club tomorrow from 10 am to 1 pm . As it’s the AWCC annual meeting held at the clubhouse. Local CRT bods will be there . 

I certainly will

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1 hour ago, Pluto said:

You lot do spout a load of uninformed bollocks sometimes. Most of the locks on the C&HN are listed, so approval will have to be obtained before any works can be undertaken. With the erosion of the soil behind one lock wall, some serious decisions will have to be made about how the restoration is undertaken. Will they be allowed to repair the structure using modern techniques, or will the wall have to be rebuilt using historic techniques? If the latter, it will be necessary to source suitable materials and contractors. I do have the specifications for the Fall Ings canal, from 1814, so about 20 years earlier, but would the heritage officer involved consider those to be suitable for the Figure of Three Locks? If they go for a more modern approach, the subsoil will need investigating as the site is on the Calder floodplain, so unlikey to be suitable for simple foundations. Finance is another problem, and if they seek Government support, a full report will have to be put together. A heritage report will be needed anyway. Whatever CRT want to do, they will be required to have reports on the various possibilities; it is just a fact of life with historic structures and government funding. There could be other aspects to the job. Should a protective wall be built between the locks and river to stop this happening again. If so, the EA will need to be involved. The site will not be easy to access for large plant as it may have to cross the Smeaton lock, which is also listed.

Just so

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4 hours ago, Jon57 said:

Why don’t you ask the big man himself as he and the rest of his crew are at south pennie boat club tomorrow from 10 am to 1 pm . As it’s the AWCC annual meeting held at the clubhouse. Local CRT bods will be there . 

I certainly will

I moored opposite once and walked around to the gate hoping for a natter and a cuppa,but was refused entry."Sorry members only"Hope you get in without meeting some officious prat!

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5 hours ago, Pluto said:

With the erosion of the soil behind one lock wall, some serious decisions will have to be made about how the restoration is undertaken. Will they be allowed to repair the structure using modern techniques, or will the wall have to be rebuilt using historic techniques? 

 

All the photographs I have seen suggest that the lock wall itself is undamaged, apart from perhaps the ends of the wingwalls. So reconstruction should not be necessary, just perhaps some localised repairs.

 

5 hours ago, Pluto said:

Should a protective wall be built between the locks and river to stop this happening again. If so, the EA will need to be involved.

Maybe, but that can be done as a separate project, and is not needed to get the canal open again.

Edited by David Mack
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9 hours ago, Pluto said:

You lot do spout a load of uninformed bollocks sometimes. Most of the locks on the C&HN are listed, so approval will have to be obtained before any works can be undertaken. With the erosion of the soil behind one lock wall, some serious decisions will have to be made about how the restoration is undertaken. Will they be allowed to repair the structure using modern techniques, or will the wall have to be rebuilt using historic techniques? If the latter, it will be necessary to source suitable materials and contractors. I do have the specifications for the Fall Ings canal, from 1814, so about 20 years earlier, but would the heritage officer involved consider those to be suitable for the Figure of Three Locks? If they go for a more modern approach, the subsoil will need investigating as the site is on the Calder floodplain, so unlikey to be suitable for simple foundations. Finance is another problem, and if they seek Government support, a full report will have to be put together. A heritage report will be needed anyway. Whatever CRT want to do, they will be required to have reports on the various possibilities; it is just a fact of life with historic structures and government funding. There could be other aspects to the job. Should a protective wall be built between the locks and river to stop this happening again. If so, the EA will need to be involved. The site will not be easy to access for large plant as it may have to cross the Smeaton lock, which is also listed.

 

Is that not what I said, but I used fewer words?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
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5 hours ago, Mad Harold said:

I moored opposite once and walked around to the gate hoping for a natter and a cuppa,but was refused entry."Sorry members only"Hope you get in without meeting some officious prat!

Sorry to hear that. It's certainly not the Club policy but regrettably we do seem to have a few members as described. 

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13 hours ago, David Mack said:

 

All the photographs I have seen suggest that the lock wall itself is undamaged, apart from perhaps the ends of the wingwalls. So reconstruction should not be necessary, just perhaps some localised repairs.

 

Maybe, but that can be done as a separate project, and is not needed to get the canal open again.

Lock walls are a very complex engineering structure in that the loading on them is continually changing as the lock fills and empties. Their strength relies to a great extent on how they are tied into the ground behind them - the ground which has been removed on the lower lock. The wall may appear to be substantially undamaged, but its supporting ground behind is missing. Repaired badly, and the wall will leak, and this can cause voids behind the wall, significantly affecting their strength. A tie is also needed between the wall on lock invert, which is almost certainly damaged. When this lock was built, the science of soil mechanics was little understood in this country as our scientists were slow to appreciate the use of calculus in understanding what was happening, and how to overcome such problems. Engineers in Europe where twenty or thirty years in advance of us in this respect, which is one reason why we lost our lead in industrial development during the Victorian period.

 

After fifty years involvement in heritage engineering, both practically and theoretically, to say the lock wall is undamaged is complete bo**cks.

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I think the language above is unnecessary since there is no absolute legal requirement be it related to heritage, safety or environment that turns a civil engineering job that would take weeks and months into one taking months and years.

 

The likelihood that restoration of the C&H will take a year or more is a function of the status of CRT and the economic realities of the canal itself.

 

I dare say the heritage aspect gives CRT some headroom that they may well be glad of given the pressures they will be under following the recent adverse weather. I wouldn’t blame them for that but if they had a commercial benefit in restoring navigation quickly they wouldn’t be going through a sequential process of design, permission, tendering, contracting, mobilisation, construction and reopening. They’d be set up to run processes concurrently involving the legal enforcement bodies as they progress.

 

It’s highly possible that the lock wall will need to be deconstructed and reconstructed and it may be a wise precaution to do so even if there are no visible signs of damage but it isn’t that complex an engineering problem. I dare say very similar issues have been addressed to completion by local authority and railway engineers across the country since this incident.

 

It’s really about commercial imperative.

 

JP

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Captain Pegg said:

I think the language above is unnecessary since there is no absolute legal requirement be it related to heritage, safety or environment that turns a civil engineering job that would take weeks and months into one taking months and years.

 

The likelihood that restoration of the C&H will take a year or more is a function of the status of CRT and the economic realities of the canal itself.

 

I dare say the heritage aspect gives CRT some headroom that they may well be glad of given the pressures they will be under following the recent adverse weather. I wouldn’t blame them for that but if they had a commercial benefit in restoring navigation quickly they wouldn’t be going through a sequential process of design, permission, tendering, contracting, mobilisation, construction and reopening. They’d be set up to run processes concurrently involving the legal enforcement bodies as they progress.

 

It’s highly possible that the lock wall will need to be deconstructed and reconstructed and it may be a wise precaution to do so even if there are no visible signs of damage but it isn’t that complex an engineering problem. I dare say very similar issues have been addressed to completion by local authority and railway engineers across the country since this incident.

 

It’s really about commercial imperative.

 

JP

 

 

It's what happens when the theorists, consultants and managers take over from the lads with shovels and barrows. Who by-the-way did a decent job that lasted a few hundred years despite not understanding the science of soil mechanics.

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Just now, Midnight said:

It's what happens when the theorists, consultants and managers take over from the lads with shovels and barrows. Who by-the-way did a decent job that lasted a few hundred years despite not understanding the science of soil mechanics.

Plenty of civil engineering from a few hundred years ago that didn't last. It is just that we don't see it now as it had to be replaced by the Victorians, or in the 20th Century, or need continuous repair today. We only see the survivors that have had the luck to still be here despite the lack of science. For example, the cuttings on the Shroppie that regularly fill themselves in after heavy rain because soil mechanics says they were built too steeply. Even 200 to 250 years ago the lads with the shovels and barrows would still have had a consulting engineer in overall charge giving them the designs. That engineer will have been self taught, but their knowledge would still have been the best available at the time. They pushed getting the science so they could improve their projects and do stuff never done before.

Jen

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17 minutes ago, Midnight said:

It's what happens when the theorists, consultants and managers take over from the lads with shovels and barrows. Who by-the-way did a decent job that lasted a few hundred years despite not understanding the science of soil mechanics.

Not really. You need a wide variety of skills and knowledge to do any sort of major engineering and these structures were designed by engineers. It’s just that they didn’t fully understand the behaviour of soils and relied heavily on empirical methods.

 

It needed a geotechnical engineer in 1820 the same way it does in 2020.

 

Even a man of Mr Brunel’s combined theoretical and practical capabilities got his earthworks on the Great Western Railway wrong. They’ve spent the last century being sequentially rebuilt.

 

JP

Edited by Captain Pegg
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2 hours ago, Pluto said:

Lock walls are a very complex engineering structure in that the loading on them is continually changing as the lock fills and empties. Their strength relies to a great extent on how they are tied into the ground behind them - the ground which has been removed on the lower lock. The wall may appear to be substantially undamaged, but its supporting ground behind is missing. Repaired badly, and the wall will leak, and this can cause voids behind the wall, significantly affecting their strength. A tie is also needed between the wall on lock invert, which is almost certainly damaged. When this lock was built, the science of soil mechanics was little understood in this country as our scientists were slow to appreciate the use of calculus in understanding what was happening, and how to overcome such problems. Engineers in Europe where twenty or thirty years in advance of us in this respect, which is one reason why we lost our lead in industrial development during the Victorian period.

 

After fifty years involvement in heritage engineering, both practically and theoretically, to say the lock wall is undamaged is complete bo**cks.

At the very least the removal of the backfill will result in the wall being subjected to a very different loading pattern for several months, compared with its 'normal' operation. It will require ongoing monitoring, possible temporary supports, unless the early conclusion is that the safest/more economic solution is to to what they have just done at Hurleston. Anyone who thinks it is a quick job should watch the (incomplete) time lapse video - unless they mistake it for real time! 

 

As you rightly say, soil mechanics is a  complex matter, not always well understood even by structural engineers who only understand RC. Getting it wrong can lead top long lasting complications such as we see regularly on the Shroppie. Made worse if the analysis that it was one the way it is for cost saving reasons (like Grenfell?) not just through ignorance, is correct.

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On 13/03/2020 at 15:07, Pluto said:

You lot do spout a load of uninformed bollocks sometimes. Most of the locks on the C&HN are listed, so approval will have to be obtained before any works can be undertaken.

Actually, that's not correct Pluto. Repairs to a listed structure using like for like materials do not require listed building consent or planning consent, so works could be started now on that basis. Consent would be required though for any non-original materials to be used, which you do mention as an option.

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5 minutes ago, Cheshire cat said:

Perhaps the structures should be delisted> Shove a load of concrete in there as would have been done 100 years ago and bobs your uncle

Well there's plenty of sand, gravel and water on site... 

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16 hours ago, John Brightley said:

Actually, that's not correct Pluto. Repairs to a listed structure using like for like materials do not require listed building consent or planning consent, so works could be started now on that basis. Consent would be required though for any non-original materials to be used, which you do mention as an option.

Access to the site for modern equipment will need to be over the original Smeaton lock which is also listed. Putting a temporary roadway over this will need permission. Other things could influence the time taken, such as there could be some wildlife which has been given legal protection. I am not saying that I necessarily agree with all the required paperwork, I am just a realist as to what will have to be done and how long it will take, something I learnt during my apprenticeship as a maintenance fitter fifty years ago.

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