Thought this might be interesting

[tree monkey]

Just a photo I found whilst doing a bit of googling 

 

[David Mack]

Is there a date? I don't think Betelgeuse has been a trip boat for at least 20 years.

[tree monkey]

4 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Is there a date? I don't think Betelgeuse has been a trip boat for at least 20 years.

I don't know anymore I'm afraid 

[BuckbyLocks]

Mid/Late 80s Snowy was working from the bottom of Chester Staircase. I would need to find my logbooks from that time to be more specific, but I shared the staircase on one occasion and met them by the winding hole by the main Chester - Ellesmere Port road on several occasions.

 

[fanshaft]

Betelgeuse was operating in Chester as a (horse drawn?) trip boat in 1975 along with motor boat Comet which was not, I think, converted. On 11th February of that year the pair loaded 45 tonnes of maize at Liverpool's Seaforth grain terminal for BOCM Manchester.  This was an experiment to see whether it was practical to load narrow boats at the terminal (there was a shortage of available wide boats and permission was granted reluctantly by our customer).  As it was a bit contentious the captain was told to wait for short boat Wye which was following and go through the docks and load together. On arrival at Liverpool top lock with Wye I found the pair coming back up the locks having loaded!.  The captain was told to wait at Hulme Lock, Manchester for Wye to arrive as, again, loaded narrow boats were unusual and we got permission to go on to MSC, into the docks only, by pulling strings, promising to observe all the protocols and generally keeping a low profile. When we got to the Seaforth terminal the manager came out and said 'no more canoes please'!  (Some grain had gone into the dock but this was somehow sorted).  On arrival at Hulme Locks, the narrow boats were not there, and it transpired they had already gone down to unload (not popular with the unloaders at the mill) and worse still had then blagged their way back down the Ship Canal, without certification,  to Ellesmere Port, incurring the wrath of the Harbour Master who subsequently took it out on me by banning Wye.   Of course large Grand Unions would have been much more suitable but despite narrow boat operators at the time complaining of no work no-one wanted to do it presumably as it was outside normal territory although Birmingham and Midland had worked in and out Liverpool docks not many years previously.  (It was a good rate per tonne). Similarly when Ken Moody, the amazing Dept Superintendent at Anderton, had lime juice occasionally for Roses around that time no-one wanted to carry that either and it went by road.