Narrow lock chamber construction

[Pluto]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I understand that the modern engineering drawing conventions that we use today, were first devised by the French, and were considered to be so much better than previous practice that they were originally classified as a State Secret. 

If you follow this: https://heritage.ecoledesponts.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10481216f.r=écluse?rk=21459;2 you shou;ld get some nice lock drawings, some 18th century.

[David Mack]

1 hour ago, jonesthenuke said:

Abandoned locks may only have collapsed due to decades of dereliction and zero maintenance and thus this does not necessarily negate the value of the original design.

I seem to think that at least one of the original Lichfield locks was blown up by the army for demolition practice. A bit unfair to blame the original builders, or those responsible for its maintenance while in use, for the lock failing in those circumstances!

[ditchcrawler]

6 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I seem to think that at least one of the original Lichfield locks was blown up by the army for demolition practice. A bit unfair to blame the original builders, or those responsible for its maintenance while in use, for the lock failing in those circumstances!

The same happened on the river Blyth, in Suffolk

 

7 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I seem to think that at least one of the original Lichfield locks was blown up by the army for demolition practice. A bit unfair to blame the original builders, or those responsible for its maintenance while in use, for the lock failing in those circumstances!

 

[Chris Lowe]

2 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

I understand that the modern engineering drawing conventions that we use today, were first devised by the French, and were considered to be so much better than previous practice that they were originally classified as a State Secret. 

 

For a while I had in my possession the drawings for Watford locks, they where absolute works of art with shadows shown, and the grain in the wood.

Had to give them back to BW in the end though.

 

 

 

 

 

[Chris Bailey]

I'll try waterway archive for Watford locks - thank you

[Stroudwater1]

2 hours ago, David Mack said:

I seem to think that at least one of the original Lichfield locks was blown up by the army for demolition practice. A bit unfair to blame the original builders, or those responsible for its maintenance while in use, for the lock failing in those circumstances!

Pewsham locks on the Wilts and Berks had a similar experience from the army during ww2 I believe. These have been restored recently and it could be worthwhile contacting the W&B for further advise. 
 

Another thought- are any of the locks on the Ribble link new/ rebuilt in 2000? Perhaps they could help, accepting they are wide locks. 

[Pluto]

12 hours ago, Chris Bailey said:

I'll try waterway archive for Watford locks - thank you

The drawings are probably in Warwickshire County Record Office, which holds some of the records from Hatton Yard (I think). Shropshire RO holds those from Ellesmere Yard. The best search engine for UK records is https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

[Chris Bailey]

Thank you - most helpful 

[Philip]

None of the locks on the northern Staffs & Worcs are fitted with a top gate paddle, whereas they're fitted on all of the locks on the southern section. Does anyone remember gate paddles north of Gailey and when/why they were removed? 

 

I've seen old photos of gate paddles on most of the Llangollen locks, does anyone remember these still in evidence in the 60s or 70s?

 

Also the two locks at Hack Green are interesting, as the SU narrow locks south of Nantwich still have gate paddles on locks which retained their wooden top gates through the steel era in the 60s/70s, all except Hack Green that is; neither have had steel gates fitted but there are no gate paddles either.

[Ian Mac]

Lock gates are a real problem because when they get manufactured incorrectly for what ever reason, the new design "feature" then stays for the next however long, till the gates have to be replaced, then there can be an argument about what is historic! This has been happening since the canals were built, and has created all sort of anomalies, all over the places. In recent times this has been exasperated by the closure of lock gate workshops, we now only have two left, most canals had at least one workshop if not more, and they built the gates, as they saw fit, with rules caulked on the walls in some cases.
This has lead to all sorts of messes with look and feel of a canal. For a classic example of how it can go wrong, take a look at the Rochdale canal, which has Northwich style gates as per the Chester canal, L&L style gates as per the Appleby, LL style Northwich gates. Carris Mill style gates, and others! There are no Rochdale gates left as I remember them, however when I started to attempt to justify returning to that design I discovered they where not the original design either. This raises the question of just what is right historically. Should the Ashton gates still be painted Brown & White as I remember them from when I was a kid, or was there another colour scheme before that?. On top of that the listing of the Manchester locks on the Ashton happened so late - 1997 that the listing says they should have steel balance beams, hydraulic paddle gearing and black and white colour scheme. It will take a major shift to get the listing change and the new gate had to have its steel beam repaired and refitted, even though historically its totally wrong in my book.

 

In an attempt to stop this C&RT are attempting to capture what a canals standard gate should be and record it in their CAD system. I am attempting to get these drawing made public. They require this given that they are moving to CNC manufacture of lock gates. The new head gate which have just been install this winter on 'hampton were machined in 47 minutes on a CNC machine, rather than taking 3days to do on the machines currently installed at Bradley.
It then took the same 2 days to assemble the gate.

Given this the BCNS and the NAG have agreed with C&RT what a standard BCN gate should be, and a set of drawing have been produced.  If you would like a copy I will attempt to procure you a set.

The best place I think to go for a set of drawing for a new lock chamber would be Tameside Planning Department. They specified what the new locks on the HVNC should be. In  particular lock 4W & 6W which are totally new locks built in 1999. They were responsible for specifying the new chambers and having a contractor build them. being a council these drawing will still exist somewhere! They are not as clever as the Perry Bar locks or the original locks on the Droitwich Junction canal which were probably the peak of narrow lock design. Followed by the new locks on the Warwick canals when the GU modernised, however they are broad locks and have some significant differences. I attach a few images of Lock4W Not both top paddle are lineside.
The next thing you will need to wrestle with, is from what are you going to make your lock gates. Follow current C&RT convention and build them of crappy French Oak with a life expectancy of about 25 years plus or minus 5 years. Or do as the River Avon Trust had done and make them of steel with a life expectancy of 50 years followed by a refurbish and then another 50 years. C&RT also have steel gates made in the late 1960's / early seventies which are currently being refurbished.
There is a pilot project underway within C&RT to investigate swapping to all(well mostly all) steel gates, two locks have already been done one set on the K&A and another set on the River Lee. Even after having people sit by the gates on the K&A there has been very little negative feedback other than the balancing is incorrect, which is due to the wrong Balance beams being fitted ie the old one rather than having new ones which were made to go with the gates, a cost/time decision taken when the two sides of the coin forgot they are connected, a problem all organisations have.

Marple locks were originally a great piece of design. When the weir crests were set correctly the locks would self fill before the bywashes kicked in. They had spill weirs for both top and bottom gates, All the gearing was ergonomically laid out, one top ground paddle , which was bigger than those now fitted and then two danny paddles driven off one spindle in the top gate. At the bottom end were a highly gear ground paddle attached to a very small paddle, then a large ground paddle, and lastly a large gate paddle on the far gate.  The bottom ground paddles were removed during and post restoration in the mid 70's, the culverts bricked up and two gate paddles installed, made the locks a lot slower. I attach a few images of Marple as it was in the late sixties. The last image 7775 you can just see the three paddle posts at the bottom end right at the bottom of the image.

[Pluto]

When discussing heritage and how to restore a historic structure, it is important to realise there was change over time, and restoration needs to be as at a specific date to be really worthwhile. At one time, I did suggest that three lock sites on the L&LC should be identified for restoration to how they were at a specific time. This could then be used for interpreting the canal's history, both for boaters and towpath users. Unfortunately this would be more expensive than simply using 'standard' gates. BW's engineers did have long discussions on how to develop standard gates in 1959/1960. As I have mentioned previously, I wrote a report on surviving lock gate drawings back in 2007, but it is too large to attache here, at 47Mb. I will attach a couple of drawings, one for a BCN gate, and one for an early Rochdale gate.

[Chris Bailey]

I would love to see a copy of that 2007 report 

chris dot bailey [at] lhcrt(dot)org{dot}uk is my email just in case you need it Mike

[Ian Mac]

1 hour ago, Pluto said:

 one for an early Rochdale gate.

 

That is a really interesting image. I have not seen any photographs of that type of paddle fitted to a Rochdale gate. The earliest ones I've seen all have what I refer to as MKi paddle gearing, some of this still exists on head ground paddles coming over from Yorkshire, all the paddles below Rochdale are either MKii or Mkiii or the dreaded Northwich standard or even worse Fenner.
A variant of Mki gearing was fitted to bottom gates, and can be seen in many early images, although MKii does occasionally show up.

[Pluto]

This is the oldest Rochdale paddle gear I found when researching the paddle gear in 2004. It is on the water supply at Summit West. The ground plan of the stand is identical to the remaining indentations on some locks where new paddles have been installed. The XL file lists all the different types I found, and whether the lock had intermediate gate recesses for C&HN length boats.

paddle:lock details.pdf

You may find the text from my report on the Rochdale paddle gear of interest, along with incomplete detailed history of each lock.

Lock details.pdf Report 2.docx

[Ian Mac]

11 minutes ago, Pluto said:

This is the oldest Rochdale paddle gear I found when researching the paddle gear in 2004. It is on the water supply at Summit West. The ground plan of the stand is identical to the remaining indentations on some locks where new paddles have been installed. The XL file lists all the different types I found, and whether the lock had intermediate gate recesses for C&HN length boats.

 

Unfortunately, no longer complete. When being maintained recently the main drive shattered. Its construction was interesting. The spindle hidden by the white cover was a forged wrought iron shaft. On to this had been cast a cog. Simple story - When being wound up the Cog shattered, resulted in a nasty head injury to the person winding.

[Jim Riley]

On 15/03/2024 at 14:50, Pluto said:

This is the oldest Rochdale paddle gear I found when researching the paddle gear in 2004. It is on the water supply at Summit West. The ground plan of the stand is identical to the remaining indentations on some locks where new paddles have been installed. The XL file lists all the different types I found, and whether the lock had intermediate gate recesses for C&HN length boats.

paddle:lock details.pdf 47.74 kB · 7 downloads

You may find the text from my report on the Rochdale paddle gear of interest, along with incomplete detailed history of each lock.

Lock details.pdf 178.27 kB · 4 downloads Report 2.docx 39.94 kB · 5 downloads

Is that the feed control at Warland Gate, near the swing bridge? My mooring is in that pound. 

[dmr]

26 minutes ago, Jim Riley said:

Is that the feed control at Warland Gate, near the swing bridge? My mooring is in that pound. 

 

I think thats the one at t'other end of the summit pound.

[Jim Riley]

Ah!

[jonesthenuke]

On 14/03/2024 at 22:51, Ian Mac said:

In an attempt to stop this C&RT are attempting to capture what a canals standard gate should be and record it in their CAD system. I am attempting to get these drawing made public. They require this given that they are moving to CNC manufacture of lock gates. The new head gate which have just been install this winter on 'hampton were machined in 47 minutes on a CNC machine, rather than taking 3days to do on the machines currently installed at Bradley.
It then took the same 2 days to assemble the gate.

Given this the BCNS and the NAG have agreed with C&RT what a standard BCN gate should be, and a set of drawing have been produced.  If you would like a copy I will attempt to procure you a set.

 

I am curious about the standardised design for BCN gates. Does it utilise a frame faced with planks as shown in your coloured drawing or is it constructed in the current style with thick timbers placed side by side and held together with long transverse bolts? A couple of years ago I have a long conversation with a CRT guy who explained to me that the modern style tend to bow under water pressure as they age and this causes the paddles to stick in their frames. I would appreciate a look at the new design if that is possible.

Edited March 21 by jonesthenuke
Added request to see drawing

[Pluto]

21 minutes ago, jonesthenuke said:

 

I am curious about the standardised design for BCN gates. Does it utilise a frame faced with planks as shown in your coloured drawing or is it constructed in the current style with thick timbers placed side by side and held together with long transverse bolts? A couple of years ago I have a long conversation with a CRT guy who explained to me that the modern style tend to bow under water pressure as they age and this causes the paddles to stick in their frames. I would appreciate a look at the new design if that is possible.

The c1960 proposal:

[Tonka]

Are you going to be using Lime based materials or are you planning to use cement

[David Mack]

47 minutes ago, jonesthenuke said:

 

I am curious about the standardised design for BCN gates. Does it utilise a frame faced with planks as shown in your coloured drawing or is it constructed in the current style with thick timbers placed side by side and held together with long transverse bolts? A couple of years ago I have a long conversation with a CRT guy who explained to me that the modern style tend to bow under water pressure as they age and this causes the paddles to stick in their frames. I would appreciate a look at the new design if that is possible.

When I started boating the BCN in about 1973 most of the newer gates were framed and planked. But there were numerous older gates, some dated as far back as 1907, 1911 and 1913 I recall, which were of the baulks of timber side-by-side type. At the time I marvelled at the 60+ years age of some of these gates, but I guess back then the polluted nature of the waters probably killed off any biological rot organisms.

[Tonka]

6 minutes ago, David Mack said:

When I started boating the BCN in about 1973 most of the newer gates were framed and planked. But there were numerous older gates, some dated as far back as 1907, 1911 and 1913 I recall, which were of the baulks of timber side-by-side type. At the time I marvelled at the 60+ years age of some of these gates, but I guess back then the polluted nature of the waters probably killed off any biological rot organisms.

Decent creosote regularly applied probably helped

[Pluto]

Post 1914 and the two world wars, all the decent timber in this country had been used, and subsequent agricultural economics did not encourage growing trees for timber. The result is today, this country is sadly lacking in decent home-grown timber.

 

[Ian Mac]

8 hours ago, dmr said:

 

I think thats the one at t'other end of the summit pound.

It is!