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


DandV

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14 hours ago, Richard T said:

Middlewich Narrowboats were a much respected hire company it was sad to see their slow decline and demise...

L10696.jpg.89bb0452c5e0e511c59999fb2cb000d8.jpgBeech setting out on her final weekend in the fleet 25 November 1994. No need that year, then, to chalkmark all the places water leaked in through the wooden cabin. Before the protective metal bars on the front, rebuilding the cabin corners (eg after another altercation with Wrenbury Lift Bridge) was a regular Saturday turnaround job.

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This day in 2006: IWA's display-boat Jubilee at Marsden end of Standedge Tunnel Huddersfield Narrow Canal, having been extra-ballasted with the blue barrels full of water at the front, and throughout the boat.

L1200_20060403_0086.JPG

Edited by PeterScott
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Thanks Peter for your photos.

Any body else join in? 

I would love to see those photos of the spring seasonal changes. Yeah I know it happens every year regardless of world crisis, but isn't that  just the most marvellous thing?

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15 minutes ago, DandV said:

That's an impressive effort, All that making tape and brightly coloured paint.  And time. What are you giving the treatment to over lockdown?

 

 

House - Scrubbing the block paving to get the moss out of the gaps!  ;)  It's a job been putting off.

 

Boat - I had a wet dock session cancelled - was going to paint the roof and handrails. So no painting. 

 

The pole was an experiment. Got carried away. It's so fancy I dare not used it. White Elephant.

 

 

 

 

 

20140922_110755.jpg

Edited by mark99
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22 hours ago, PeterScott said:

Oak in need of some frontcabin-corner attention. Llangollen Easter 1972 in the livery of Willow Wren Kearns Ltd

L00222.jpg

Some colleagues and I owned Willow Wren Hire Cruisers (WWHC) in Rugby from 1981 till 1993, having bought the business from the late Dennis Clarke. WW Kearns (later Middlewich Narrowboats) was an independent company until and beyond 1981, using the Willow Wren name under licence from WWHC, with WWHC building their boats and supplying bookings, before our time.

 

We had the same problems with all the old wooden top boats that we inherited at Rugby. Every week boats came back up our arm with busted cabin fronts. We tackled the problem on the biggest boats by fitting steel extension roofs to the cabins, extending over the well deck, tapered and supported by an access ladder at the fore end, a bit like the hotel boats of the time. Leaks were cured by re-skinning most of the Lino-clad cabins with epoxy scrimmed ply, and the old wood framed hopper windows were replaced with alloy framed units, all until we could afford to replace the boats, which happened very quickly!
 

The root problem was that the overall height of the boats, from bottom plate to cabin roof, was too high, the obvious reason being that the cabin floor was raised some 9 or 10 inches off the bottom of the boat, making the cabins higher than they needed to be. I once asked Dennis why this was. His response was that the cabins had to be that high to give enough headroom over the floor. The floor had to be high to accommodate the necessary ballast. Why did they need so much ballast? To get the height of the boats down so they could get under the bridges! Simples!  It reminded me of the old one about the Irish barge horse and the bridge in Dublin, but it may not be PC to repeat that now.

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2 hours ago, Balliol said:

... steel extension roofs to the cabins, extending over the well deck, tapered and supported by an access ladder at the fore end, a bit like the hotel boats of the time.

Rose and Castle hotel pair in July 1971 near Hawkesbury Junction, Oxford Canal. These were run by, or associated with, WillowWrenHC at the time, iirc.

L00185a.jpg

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3 hours ago, Balliol said:

Some colleagues and I owned Willow Wren Hire Cruisers (WWHC) in Rugby from 1981 till 1993, having bought the business from the late Dennis Clarke. WW Kearns (later Middlewich Narrowboats) was an independent company until and beyond 1981, using the Willow Wren name under licence from WWHC, with WWHC building their boats and supplying bookings, before our time.

 

We had the same problems with all the old wooden top boats that we inherited at Rugby. Every week boats came back up our arm with busted cabin fronts. We tackled the problem on the biggest boats by fitting steel extension roofs to the cabins, extending over the well deck, tapered and supported by an access ladder at the fore end, a bit like the hotel boats of the time. Leaks were cured by re-skinning most of the Lino-clad cabins with epoxy scrimmed ply, and the old wood framed hopper windows were replaced with alloy framed units, all until we could afford to replace the boats, which happened very quickly!
 

The root problem was that the overall height of the boats, from bottom plate to cabin roof, was too high, the obvious reason being that the cabin floor was raised some 9 or 10 inches off the bottom of the boat, making the cabins higher than they needed to be. I once asked Dennis why this was. His response was that the cabins had to be that high to give enough headroom over the floor. The floor had to be high to accommodate the necessary ballast. Why did they need so much ballast? To get the height of the boats down so they could get under the bridges! Simples!  It reminded me of the old one about the Irish barge horse and the bridge in Dublin, but it may not be PC to repeat that now.

There is one of the Rugby boats moored on the Trent at Beeston - I think its Lapwing. It still a wooden top. I have a photo of it somewhere. We never hired from Rugby but did many times from Middlewich.

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1 hour ago, PeterScott said:

On this day in 2018. Isolation on the Oxford Canal

L2762_20180404_0047.JPG

It must be five years or more since it suddenly appeared. Rumour was that someone excavated a hole in the bank, inserted the boat and put the hole back (if you see what I mean). We must have passed it a dozen times or more and, though we have seen signs of habitation, such as washing hanging on that whirlygig, we have never seen an actual person there.

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3 hours ago, Richard T said:

There is one of the Rugby boats moored on the Trent at Beeston - I think its Lapwing. It still a wooden top. I have a photo of it somewhere. We never hired from Rugby but did many times from Middlewich.

Lapwing (50’) was one of the ones where we re-skinned the cabin with ply and epoxy scrim and changed the windows, so the cabin might have lasted, although that will be >35 years ago. The interior was completely rotten so we stripped it and did a basic “cabin camper” fit out, but it wasn’t popular. The kids, even then, were getting too used to home comforts!

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3 hours ago, Athy said:

It must be five years or more since it suddenly appeared. Rumour was that someone excavated a hole in the bank, inserted the boat and put the hole back (if you see what I mean). We must have passed it a dozen times or more and, though we have seen signs of habitation, such as washing hanging on that whirlygig, we have never seen an actual person there.

Hasn't been blacked since

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