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how wide is Shropshire union


davathehut

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According to C&RT 9ft 8". The locks are all double width on that section (14ish ft), but according to C&RT guidance other structures on the waterway limit craft to the 9ft 8" beam. And for reference, south of Nantwich it becomes a narrow canal (Max beam 7ft). 

Edited by booke23
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7 minutes ago, David Mack said:

129563_cd34065e.jpg

That will be the 9'8" then?  I would like to measure that between the distorted banks before committing a boat through.

 

There has been nothing wider than 7' through there for a long time.

Edited by Tracy D'arth
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14 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

That will be the 9'8" then?  I would like to measure that between the distorted banks before committing a boat through.

 

There has been nothing wider than 7' through there for a long time.

 

That looks a bit more than 9'8"......actually looking at it closely, not far off a wide lock width. 

 

While not a waterway structure, the Anglo welsh base at Bunbury creates a significant narrow when all the hire boats are moored! You'd never get a wide beam through there unless they were all out on hire. 

Edited by booke23
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10 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

That looks a bit more than 9'8"......actually looking at it closely, not far off a wide lock width. 

 

While not a waterway structure, the Anglo welsh base at Bunbury creates a significant narrow when all the hire boats are moored! You'd never get a wide beam through there unless they were all out on hire. 

I think you will find it is full width other than maybe a few inches bank movement. Wasn't Elsmere to Nantwich build wide beam gauge and only narrowed when BW installed a tow path under the new road bridge which stops the Museum running a wide beam trip boat

 

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9 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Wasn't Elsmere to Nantwich build wide beam gauge and only narrowed when BW installed a tow path under the new road bridge which stops the Museum running a wide beam trip boat

 

 

I'm sure you're right, but the official C&RT guidance below indicates 9'8" all the way to Nantwich. Of course this guidance could well be wrong.

 

Chas Hardern once told me that 12'6" boats have made it as far as his base at Beeston.

 

@davathehut How wide is your boat?

 

 

image.png.b795f5cdbacd18e0bf3c09526dae4292.png

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Canalplan has the road bridge as the pinch point at 10ft 6, in which case you could wind just upstream of it at Stanlow arriving from Nantwich. Rest of the canal is given as 13'6, which is a bit of allowance for the Iron Lock. (I've seen paired working boats go through there; skipper said the narrowing was really only a problem for full length boats but I wouldn't risk it myself)

 

But if your boat was based at Nantwich you wouldn't be able to go anywhere else, and if it was coming from the Ship Canal you wouldn't get beyond the port itself...

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11 hours ago, David Mack said:

...only restriction less than 14 ft is the bridge just above the locks at Ellesmere Port.

 

3 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

...Wasn't Ellesmere [Port] to Nantwich build wide beam gauge and only narrowed when BW installed a towpath under the new road bridge which stops the Museum running a wide beam trip boat

Yes, that is my recollection, too. It was one of those bits of motorway-vandalism on the waterway network when the bit of M53 junction narrowed the wide waterway to the current restriction in about 1972-5 and iirc it's both 146A and 147A that are narrower concrete bridges.

 

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Bridge No 146A (Ellesmere Port) SU

 

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spacer.pngPowell's Bridge No 147 and 147A in the background

 

 

and a poor pic of Gifford horseboating through tbe bridge.

 

 

Lewis Edwards in the 1950 edition of Inland Waterways of Great Britain quotes 13'2" as the maximum width from Nantwich to Ellesmere Port.

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5 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

I think you will find it is full width other than maybe a few inches bank movement. Wasn't Elsmere to Nantwich build wide beam gauge and only narrowed when BW installed a tow path under the new road bridge which stops the Museum running a wide beam trip boat

 

I don't think BW installed it - it was built like that. I'm not sure how the MoT of whatever the agency was got away with a bridge restricting the channel, given that by then the 1968 Transport Act had been passed, but they did... 

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8 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

I don't think BW installed it - it was built like that. I'm not sure how the MoT of whatever the agency was got away with a bridge restricting the channel, given that by then the 1968 Transport Act had been passed, but they did... 

I thought it was put in minus towpath

 

8 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

I don't think BW installed it - it was built like that. I'm not sure how the MoT of whatever the agency was got away with a bridge restricting the channel, given that by then the 1968 Transport Act had been passed, but they did... 

 

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The new bridge was built as it is now, with a narrowed channel. At the time, there were no full-width boats on the canal, just some converted lifeboats at around 9 or 10 feet wide, and no-one, apart from a few enthusiasts, thought it necessary to maintain a full width channel. The towpath could be removed if it were really thought beneficial, and a floating towpath fitted.

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Legislation Crest

Transport Act 1968

1968 CHAPTER 73

An Act to make further provision with respect to transport and related matters.

[25th October 1968]

Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows :—

 

 

105Maintenance of the Board's waterways

(1)With a view to securing the general availability of the commercial and cruising waterways for public use, it shall be the duty of the Waterways Board, subject to the provisions of this section—

(a)to maintain the commercial waterways in a suitable condition for use by commercial freight-carrying vessels; and

(b)to maintain the cruising waterways in a suitable condition for use by cruising craft, that is to say, vessels constructed or adapted for the carriage of passengers and driven by mechanical power.

(2)Neither paragraph (a) nor paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of this section shall impose on the Board any duty to maintain a waterway, or any part of a waterway, in a suitable condition for use by any vessel of the kind mentioned in that paragraph unless the dimensions of the vessel (that is to say, its length, width, height of superstructure and draught)—

(a)correspond to, or are less than, those of a vessel of that kind which customarily used that waterway or part during the period of nine months ending with 8th December 1967; 

 

SCHEDULE 12

Commercial and Cruising Waterways

Part II

Cruising Waterways

...

The Shropshire Union Canal from its junction with the Manchester Ship Canal at Ellesmere Port to its junction with the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal at Autherley, including the branches to the River Dee at Chester, to Llantisilio and to Middlewich.

 

 

So @Pluto, are you saying that no full width wide beam craft customarily used that part of the Shroppie during the 9 months ended 8th December 1967?

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2 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

 

 

So @Pluto, are you saying that no full width wide beam craft customarily used that part of the Shroppie during the 9 months ended 8th December 1967?

 Given the nature of leisure craft at the time*, and the fact there had been no wide beam commercial craft there for many a long year, I think that's a fairly safe bet

 

*Small wooden and fibreglass cruisers, converted ships life boats, converted narrow boats, purpose built narrow boats

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16 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Are there any other places where the dimensions of a cruising waterway were deliberately reduced as a result of a lack of use by full-dimension craft during that 9 month period?

 

I'd suggets that the narrowing wasn't done deliberately to stop wide craft using the canal, but more that there was no requirement to maintain the width and it was an easy way to get it installed

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11 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

I'd suggets that the narrowing wasn't done deliberately to stop wide craft using the canal, but more that there was no requirement to maintain the width and it was an easy way to get it installed

I was at the Boat museum regularly in the early-mid eighties, and remember the the pound between the wide locks being used as a long term dry dock for boats which couldn't easily have been floated due to missing planks and incomplete hulls, so the museum was at least taking advantage of the inability of wide boats to use the canal by that point.

 

MP.

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On 25/05/2022 at 11:22, ditchcrawler said:

I think you will find it is full width other than maybe a few inches bank movement. Wasn't Elsmere to Nantwich build wide beam gauge and only narrowed when BW installed a tow path under the new road bridge which stops the Museum running a wide beam trip boat

 

Apparently the builders of the bridge asked Crt or BW what width should they build the bridge ? 14 ft replied Crt. So the builders built the bridge and is 14ft wide.

What Crt should have said was the canal needs to be 14ft wide under the bridge

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I knew about the narrowing from Dr David Owen, who helped set up the museum. IIUC then BW could only demand bridges big enough for boats that had been in use on the canal prior to the 1968 transport act - the MoT wouldn't be obliged to build (or pay for) anything bigger. 

50 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Are there any other places where the dimensions of a cruising waterway were deliberately reduced as a result of a lack of use by full-dimension craft during that 9 month period?

 

I don't know - I'm struggling to think of any other modern structures (say post 1945) that restrict historic gauge 

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1 hour ago, magpie patrick said:

 Given the nature of leisure craft at the time*, and the fact there had been no wide beam commercial craft there for many a long year, I think that's a fairly safe bet

 

*Small wooden and fibreglass cruisers, converted ships life boats, converted narrow boats, purpose built narrow boats

I would be surprised if anyone was monitoring use of the canal daily for the 9 months for wider boat use. Some converted life boats were quite wide beams, though not I dont think 14'.

 

Its possible that a houseboat could have been moved during that time maybe, there were a number of these around as we know , immobile but sometimes towed to different sites? 

 

I suspect that the narrowing was done without recourse to finer legislation and just on the assumption that canals are for 7' ish wide narrowboats  arent they? 

 

Shame its not since been challenged though expect the cost would be a lot for that. 

 

 

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