Audlem closed, again!

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, dogless said:

The fact it's common doesn't make it good.

 

Rog

We all do it to a degree. If our car breaks down we take it to a garage and have to wait until they  can fit it in. We don't carry spares for all our domestic appliances, not even mobile phones. How about a spare prop for your boat in case it falls off.

[Mike Tee]

^^^ I think you should name them

[Paul C]

29 minutes ago, Mike Tee said:

^^^ I think you should name them

How about "Priscilla the Prop"?

[johnmck]

Well I say, well done CRT. 👏 

[Arthur Marshall]

46 minutes ago, johnmck said:

Well I say, well done CRT. 👏 

Certainly was this morning. A couple of vlockies who were intending to do other stuff came and joined in, one pulling the BP boat out of the lock and securing it, and then walking up the flight with the singlehanders to keep things moving. Proper locking,  walking up to set locks and letting us close up etc, not imposing themselves, just speeding it up.

As a point of interest, the wedges (feathers are they called?) on those locks are held in place with rings fitted through the ends, so they can't possibly fall out,  or be pulled out without the rings being deliberately removed.

[Midnight]

9 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

.... As a point of interest, the wedges (feathers are they called?) on those locks are held in place with rings fitted through the ends, so they can't possibly fall out,  or be pulled out without the rings being deliberately removed.

 

Hmmmm there goes the boat ram theory. Very curious thing. Feathers and collars laid neatly on the lockside. Does anyone know if a boat exited the lock going up just before the Black Prince boat came in. If so how did that get in if the feathers were missing? And was there a boat waiting to go up?

This is better than an episode of 'Death in Paradise'.

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, Midnight said:

 

Hmmmm there goes the boat ram theory. Very curious thing. Feathers and collars laid neatly on the lockside. Does anyone know if a boat exited the lock going up just before the Black Prince boat came in. If so how did that get in if the feathers were missing? And was there a boat waiting to go up?

This is better than an episode of 'Death in Paradise'.

But were they, I read a report that Roger Fuller was looking for them with his underwater camera (13) Facebook

[nicknorman]

Just came up Audlem today. The so called “shear pins” are tapered plates that hold the collars on. The tapered plates are retained by bent galvanised nails. On several of the locks, I noticed that these bent nails were next to the fat end of the pin - ie they were serving no purpose in preventing the plates from sliding out.

So even if the plates on lock 10 were removed by human intervention, it would have been trivially easy. The nails on lock 10 have been replaced by nuts and bolts in the correct place. But several other locks remain vulnerable to the same problem.

[hider]

The feathers on locks all over the system are not properly retained.  

Some are bent up at the tail ends, some have wire threaded through holes. Others have rings in the tail ends. Many have nothing securing them.

None would be very difficult to remove.

[DHutch]

On 01/08/2024 at 20:10, YM2413 said:

Hi! I happened to be driving the boat when the gates fell off. From the other end of the boat nothing looked amiss, the collars were left in place. I don't think the gates hit the boat at all when they fell off, they were pretty damn close though. one of them might have knocked, but I didn't feel or hear anything.
We were initially told we could wait on the boat while the CRT assessed the situation, so we got to spend the night in the lock! It was pretty miserable down there, we were told we had to leave the boat around 10am the next day.

We had a dog on board, but luckily she wasn't too hard to get out.

 

Pretty miserable situation, but at least no one was hurt.

 

Thanks for joining the forum and posting a first hand account.

 

Glad nobody was hurt and the boat undamaged.