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Railway Contractors Building Canals


Heartland

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There were times when a new railway required a canal diversion. The Birmingham Canal has several examples, but there were cases elsewhere. on the Oxford, Trent and Mersey Canal etc

 

The work had to meet the specification of the company engineer, but not always. When James Shiptons timber yard was moved to allow the space to be used by the High Level Station, the railway contractors Hoof, Hill & Moore supplied a bricklayer and foreman to make the new canal basin into the new timber yard. 

 

Canal company records rarely mention who did what, but the general responsibility was with the railway contractor.

 

The making of the BCN diversion from Canal Street to Albion Wharf probably ranks as perhaps one of the longest sections a railway contractor might have made,  But it would be of interest to know of other examples.

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Rolt, in "Building a Railway" his book about the Great Central, using a  photo archive from Leicester library IIRC,  gives general details of the contractors for each section and quite a bit of detail about how the Oxford Canal was crossed near Rugby station whilst keeping the canal open.

 

N

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Here is one. When Rotherham Central station and the railway associated with it was built it covered the canal between what is now Ickles Lock and Rotherham Town lock. Ickles Lock was built to drop the canal to the river level and the canal diverted in to a cut parallel to the river Don. After the river Rother joins the Don, the canal joined the river. It left the river at what I believe was an existing cut, via a flood lock and rejoined the old line of the canal. You can still see traces of the old lock for the built over cut, which originally dropped the level to that of the river in the stone work  as you turn sharply in to Town lock.

See map below from 1853, with the canal in green, the Don in mid blue and the Rother in dark blue. A post railway map is below with the new railway in red.

Jen

rotherham1853.jpg.8037b33e4c895607cd0f6c96ff2a458e.jpg

 

rotherham-later.jpg.0fd420c9c7f75c44781b3d2547866cf7.jpg

 

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Here is a pic of the area. Taken near the railway station, facing the lock, with the junction to the river Don in the distance. The start of the abandoned cut to Iccles is at the lower right corner. There is a lot of development going on around there at the moment, associated with a flood relief scheme and various new builds, so access to take a better picture isn't easy. I remember evidence of space for a set of bottom lock gates in the wall immediately behind where the lamp post is in the picture, but would like to confirm before stating that for certain.

2283308_3882a869.jpg.7d604d75f0cf53a3efc27aab3bb31548.jpg

© Copyright Dave Bevis and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

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On 07/09/2021 at 17:20, David Mack said:

Interesting. Dropping the canal navigation into an adjacent river channel to get round some other development is a feature of a number of canal restoration projects, but I didn't realise it had such historical precedent!

Wikipedia reckons that the Manchester Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway owned the South Yorkshire Navigation at this point. Diverting the canal in to the river and using its old route gave them an easy way to get their new railway under the existing Sheffield and Rotherham Railway line, without having to get permission for and build a new bridge. The Sheffield and Rotherham was opened in 1838 and is the line that runs left to right in the maps in my earlier post, terminating immediately after crossing the Don. This later became a goods station, before it and the line were closed.

Jen

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17 minutes ago, Heartland said:

With Rotherham, I believe the Central station was on the course of the Navigation

 

Where the original passenger station was, then yes. This was to the west of the current station.  The current station is where the old goods yard was in the NLS map above. This was alongside the original navigation, as it is now.

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