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Tonic required. Send in your photos of what is nice on the waterways now.


DandV

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On 02/08/2020 at 18:31, PeterScott said:

On this day 2018L2792_20180802_0219s.jpg.c1ed31e4b97f3694329150d6aa6e3558.jpg

River Tyne. Central Newcastle's seven bridges

44 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

Thats a very well taken photo.  I swore I only could see six but then clocked a glimpse of the 'blinking eye'.

Yes thanks. The tripboat crew pause at this exact point for all their passengers to take their photos. So it's their composition rather than mine ?  And they say that it's the corner of the newestblinking-eye bridge that is least-visible.

 

On this day in 2018L2791_20180803_0014s.jpg.5f6f120caa28f07b5c28680e202365a6.jpg

 

HIghlevel bridge River Tyne Newcastle. Pedestrian walkway and the decking at river level need some tlc

 

 

L2791_20180803_0004s.jpg.749d1de2a3058bfe045df63dfb29eeee.jpg

 

 

Edited by PeterScott
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On 01/08/2020 at 09:42, Pluto said:

According to Charles Berg's website, http://projetbabel.org/fluvial/index.htm, the original locks were 27m by 4.4m, and enlarged by Becquey to 32.4m by 5.2m, and then replaced by Freycinet with locks 39m by 5.2m. However, although the c1830 rebuilding made the locks some 0.8m wider, I think they must have kept the original chamber wall on one side as you can still see original gate recesses and ground paddle culverts.

 

Re the first summit level canal with chamber locks, there is also the Stecknitzfahrt, from the Elbe to Lübeck. The attached figure from the paper on the waterway, 2009 DWhG Vol 13. Wellbrock, suggests that at least two of the original flash locks had been converted to chamber locks before 1480, so only shortly after chamber locks had first been used on the Canal de Bereguardo circa 1450.

2009 DWhG Band 13 Wellbrock, Stecknitzfahrt.jpg

Thanks very much for coming up with this. Having been taught with great certainty at my esteemed grammar school that the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley jointly invented canals I have been struggling ever since. Probably the Chinese will have something to say on who came earlier, but to build the Canal de Briare at the beginning of the 17th Century the size that they did was an achievement all the same.

 

One wonders at what stage the Duke, having visited both the Briare and the even larger locks on the Canal du Midi, realised he could get away with the sizes that he did.

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34 minutes ago, John Liley said:

One wonders at what stage the Duke, having visited both the Briare and the even larger locks on the Canal du Midi, realised he could get away with the sizes that he did.

How many locks do you think he built on his original canal?

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12 hours ago, John Liley said:

Thanks very much for coming up with this. Having been taught with great certainty at my esteemed grammar school that the Duke of Bridgewater and James Brindley jointly invented canals I have been struggling ever since. Probably the Chinese will have something to say on who came earlier, but to build the Canal de Briare at the beginning of the 17th Century the size that they did was an achievement all the same.

 

One wonders at what stage the Duke, having visited both the Briare and the even larger locks on the Canal du Midi, realised he could get away with the sizes that he did.

I have just been doing a bit of research into why narrow canals were the size they are. The 70 feet (approx) is quite easy, as 68/69 feet was the length used on the first long mine boats between Worsley and Manchester, although it is uncertain if they actually entered the mine at this time as the usual mine boats were only six feet wide. In fact, Brindley's first suggestion for narrow canals was for boats 70 feet by six feet. Even in the 20th century, the Bridgewater and MB&BC box boats remained at 68 feet length.

For the width, the existing river navigations around the Mersey had locks around 16 feet in width. The Duke, when he built his locks at Runcorn, used a width of 14 feet 6 inches. I suspect he did this so that he had a monopoly of carriage on his canal, as his boats were only wide enough for his locks. There were a some 14 feet wide non-Bridgewater Mersey flats at the time, but not that many, as they were mostly built for the other navigations by the 1780s. Narrow boats were then built wide enough so that two would fit into one Bridgewater lock, hence 7 feet.

In short, narrow boats seem to have developed from the boats used for carrying coal to Manchester from Worsley, and Brindley is said to have experimented with them whilst deciding upon the size for what became the Trent & Mersey Canal. The width may have been influenced by the Duke's decision to have 14 feet 6 inch wide locks at Runcorn, but it is uncertain when he actually decided upon the width of locks on his canal, bearing in mind that there were several changes to his original plan for a canal towards Liverpool and the Mersey.

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We crossed the Briare Aqueduct this day 2013. It is actually the start of the canal lateral a la Loire and was built by the Eiffel company and opened in 1896 as originally the barges locked down in the Loire and and used the river as far as Digion but as the Loire is a free flowing waterway Either in flood or shallow they eventually  built the canal but still had a shorter  crossing Of the river until the Aqueduct was built.

D0EBAD09-9586-4807-A918-835003CBB01D.jpeg

Edited by Dav and Pen
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Two photos of the river crossing at Briare. The first shows the original lock, which gave access purely to the river. The second shows the lock on the north side of the river which was built to provide access to the lateral canal before the aqueduct opened. The navigable part of the river is straight ahead, with the bridge's curved ramp for towage visible. A further lock on the south side of the river raised boats back up to the lateral canal.

2000 Canal de Briare 195 old river lock.jpg

river crossing, Briare 247.jpg

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1 hour ago, Dav and Pen said:

We crossed the Briare Aqueduct this day 2013. It is actually the start of the canal lateral a la Loire and was built by the Eiffel company and opened in 1896 as originally the barges locked down in the Loire and and used the river as far as Digion but as the Loire is a free flowing waterway Either in flood or shallow they eventually  built the canal but still had a shorter  crossing Of the river until the Aqueduct was built.

D0EBAD09-9586-4807-A918-835003CBB01D.jpeg

We crossed it in a pénichette just over a year ago. The french did build quite splendid hackaducks, didn't they? We've been over the one at Agen a time or two and that's equally imposing.

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Today at Braunston TurnP8042234s.jpg.fb2f94b65da88a5743ee09ec5fbaedfa.jpg

 

Rachael and Julian (with whom we once shared the Big Red boat that has appeared occasionally in this thread) have just bought this boat. Activities thereon have of course been much curtailed by the Accursed Virus.

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