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


DandV

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1 hour ago, PeterScott said:

WW197509-p25s.jpg.728f63078570470cd8db82d34e1b9ed7.jpgWW197509-p23s.jpg.1310e10ba79027601c13cdabd0d88c4e.jpgThe map is from p24 WW Sept 1975, middle page of an article by Mark Baldwin on Pownall, his writings and enthusiasms, rather than the scheme itself. Begins " John Frederick Pownall was born at Pembroke Dock on 17th March, 1900, the son of a successful civil engineer. The family later moved to South London and Pownall went to the local Rutlish School at Merton Park. His education was interrupted by service in the Army of the Rhine but resumed after the War, and in 1922 he graduated from King's College, London, with a degree in Civil Engineering.

His early years as a civil engineer were spent with Surrey County Council, followed by a spell on the Great North Road in Scotland. Venturing further afield, he went to work in Kenya and the Sudan on irrigation schemes. Despite this varied experience, he never joined the Institution of Civil Engineers, although his father was a member for over 40 years. His interest in all forms of transport was already manifest, and before the Second World War he spent several years without employment to develop his ideas more fully. ..."

Scanned and OCR'd into a .pdf here

 

 

 

Many thanks indeed. That is certainly something to chew on. My friends who went to see him found Mr Pownall at home in Wimbledon, still declaring that his scheme would one day have to be adopted, in the interest of water supply. Apart from that, they had nothing more to say about him. Andrew Denny of 'Waterways World' kindly sent be a copy of his thesis, which takes a particular example of what could be done, up beside the higher reaches of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, on the Lancashire side. I have to confess it made his proposal of a tunnel in that area daunting: It would rival, no, overshadow, HS2.

 

To get UK governments interested at all seems beyond unlikely, although Boris Johnson (who else?) referred to the Pownall scheme in his  days as London's mayor, though how serious he was one can only imagine. Should the Manchester Ship Canal and the Aire & Calder together become major arteries of trade, then a case could begin to be made. But not in my lifetime, I fear

 

A major handicap to an expansion of the English canal system for freight is the lack of knowledge of what has developed, and continues to develop, in nearby mainland Europe. Do those who run the Inland Waterways Association, for example, ever go there? They should.

 

My thanks agin, all the same. I shall keep  the idea of a book on this with others bumbling about in my brain

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9 hours ago, PeterScott said:

On this day in 2013

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Knostrop Flood Lock A+C Leeds The rotating footbridge over the (then still operational) flood lock,  Compare  18Jul2020 More twentysixths of February

 

This place got me very confused. The first time I took the boat to Leeds, Knostrop Flood Lock was there and I went through it. The second time it was gone! Check the Nicholson's, a lock. Look around, wide open river  navigation.

Jen

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On this day in 2013

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Compare 17Feb2013

 

The crane was still upsidedown in t'cut above Apperley Bridge locks ...

 

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.... and since the earlier picture, a temporary bridge was built to divert the towingpath to t'other side of the canal. ....

 

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... across the cofferdam ...

 

 

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... and then along a new offside path to the second temporary bridge.

 

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The normal daily towingpath use of half a dozen gongooglers and their dogs, was much enhanced by this new tourist-attraction of the overturned half-million-pound crane, so justifying, maybe, the extensive new yellow infrastructure.

Edited by PeterScott
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On 23/05/2020 at 14:46, Athy said:

... We went into Oxford for the day by train a couple of years ago and walked down the canal to its very end. ...   Off-shot to the left we noticed another channel, ... there were some interesting boats parked there on what looked like good, secluded moorings.

On this day in 2014

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River below Isis Lock Oxford

 

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More twentyeighths of February

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On this day in 2008 (*)

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Birmingham Worcester Bar. (*) the nearest approximation to 29Feb2008

Police with guns. Snipers on rooftops. Escorted by police through their barriers, set up for a party conference.

The West Midlands Police did not have a suitable boat to patrol the canal past the conference centre, and had imported a crew and boat from Dorset. The crew were disturbed to find a plastic bag of discarded rubbish floating in the canal, in considering the damage it might do to their propellor if it became entwined therein. Join the club we thought.

 

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