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Railings for Marple aqueduct - whats next?


Laurence Hogg

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1 hour ago, dixi188 said:

Went over Marple Aqueduct last  Thursday.

How much did those railings cost?

Why didn't they just copy the railway viaduct ones?

 Mega bucks wasted!

Apparently

Quote

In close collaboration with Knight Architects, Canal River Trust based the design on the loop pattern of ‘cotton weaving’, which acknowledges Samuel Oldknow’s historic Mellor cotton mill in Marple and the use of the Peak Forest Canal for transporting the cotton he produced.

Each vertical rail is ‘woven’ between the two low-level rails and the top rail, as a single self-intersecting ‘thread’. These vertical elements form the ‘warp’, and the horizontal rails form the ‘weft’.

Didn't you notice that each vertical rail is woven between the two low level rails and the top rail as a single self intersecting thread? What were you doing, just concentrating on steering your boat? I would have thought that it was obviously to acknowledge Oldknow's Mellor cotton mill! You wouldn't have got that if they had just copied the railway viaduct ones. Can't find how much it eventually cost, but it is worth every penny of our very reasonable license fee.

 

Jen ?

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Thanks Jen,

 

I'll have to go back and read up on this so I can appreciate the intricacies of the railings.

I thought they were to stop someone falling off.

In fact, I will have to go back many, many times to get my money's worth.

 

Dixi.

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10 hours ago, dixi188 said:

Went over Marple Aqueduct last  Thursday.

How much did those railings cost?

Why didn't they just copy the railway viaduct ones?

 Mega bucks wasted!

Because the railway ones are scaffolding poles and pig ugly? 

 

The design used may be over the top but in the setting they could do to be aesthetically pleasing at least.

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2 hours ago, dixi188 said:

Thanks Jen,

 

I'll have to go back and read up on this so I can appreciate the intricacies of the railings.

I thought they were to stop someone falling off.

In fact, I will have to go back many, many times to get my money's worth.

 

Dixi.

Treat it like any other modern art installation. Take your time. Soak up the ambience. Let the design fill your mind and soul. Contemplate the railings from different angles, including hanging off them by your hands over the drop. You'll come to appreciate why they are there and why they cost so much when you lose your grip and plummet towards the river Goyt. ?

 

Jen

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15 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Well they serve no practical purpose.

So nobody has fallen from the aqueduct ever or do you mean they won't prevent a person who jumps the canal from falling?

 

My point if they are railings then cheap and cheerful similar to what would have been erected when the aqueduct was built (had there been the daft kids around we have today).   If modern art there are probably better places and sponsors who wouldn't have used much needed CRT funds.

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5 hours ago, magpie patrick said:

Because the railway ones are scaffolding poles and pig ugly? 

And don't actually stop what was required to be stopped on the aqueduct? (I'll gloss over whether they are needed)

 

The railway ones prevent a trained person from inadvertently stepping into oblivion whilst going about their work. They wouldn't stop an arbitrary untrained member of the public who (almost by definition) has abandoned common sense to be within touching distance of the edge in the first place.

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16 hours ago, dixi188 said:

Went over Marple Aqueduct last  Thursday.

How much did those railings cost?

Why didn't they just copy the railway viaduct ones?

 

Or why didn't they put up a stone parapet wall to match the one on the towpath side?

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If they are supposed to represent some cotton mill equipment, how many mill machines were 100 yards long? I know whole mills were that long.

As for the railway railings being "Pig ugly", maybe,  but they are still going to be in view from the Aqueduct, and I don't think NR will replace them. 

The only people who will see the new railings will be boaters who paid for them, a few walkers and idiots trying to climb them. 

When viewed from the valley the railings are not visible. It just seems a waste of money for someone's glory scheme.

 

I think it would have been better to put most of  the £1,500,000 into an emergency fund for things like the Middlewich breach and put up plain railings.

 

Just my thoughts as a licence payer.

 

Dixi.

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dixi188, one of the issues that CRT have, to a certain extant, be seen doing something to pacify the Health & Safety at work brigade. If people insist in falling off bridges / viaducts, whether voluntarily or otherwise , what do CRT do - nothing? Whether we like it or not we are now in a blame & litigious culture, if CRT do nothing they can be fined hefty sums by HSE for not showing due care. Would you like you licence fee to go towards that?

Again, damned if they don't and damned if they do.

There are similar concerns regarding fencing with the Pontcysyllte aqueduct after a youth fell off it following climbing over the fence. It was not that simple of course, there were other factors, some self induced,  which caused the youth to fall.

 

Also we have to remember when these structures were built the public were not officially allowed on the towpath, rather like trespassing on railway property now.

Edited by Ray T
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Similar to the handrails installed on the lock bridges on the Staffs and Worcs.  When an unfortunate accident leads to somebody's death there is a review and actions to prevent a reoccurrence.

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11 hours ago, dixi188 said:

I don't disagree with railings, just that £1,500,000 seems a lot for 100 yds of railings, I would have thought that some off the shelf stuff could be done for about £100,000.

Listed structure, don’t forget.

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14 hours ago, dixi188 said:

If they are supposed to represent some cotton mill equipment, how many mill machines were 100 yards long?

Some of the largest mules used for spinning had 1000 spindles, and would have been getting on for that length. For fine spinning, the spindles would have been at least 2 inches apart, plus the headstock, so around 60 yards at least.

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14 hours ago, Ray T said:

dixi188, one of the issues that CRT have, to a certain extant, be seen doing something to pacify the Health & Safety at work brigade. If people insist in falling off bridges / viaducts, whether voluntarily or otherwise , what do CRT do - nothing?

And you would assert that people insisted upon falling off Marple Aqueduct?

 

Do you have stats on the number of people in the 200 years that it was unfenced?

 

Of those, how many would have been prevented by the fence that has been erected?

 

How many will fall off in the next 200 years as the fence induces people to jump the channel because it is now "safe"

 

 

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14 hours ago, Ray T said:

dixi188, one of the issues that CRT have, to a certain extant, be seen doing something to pacify the Health & Safety at work brigade. If people insist in falling off bridges / viaducts, whether voluntarily or otherwise , what do CRT do - nothing? Whether we like it or not we are now in a blame & litigious culture, if CRT do nothing they can be fined hefty sums by HSE for not showing due care. Would you like you licence fee to go towards that?

Again, damned if they don't and damned if they do.

There are similar concerns regarding fencing with the Pontcysyllte aqueduct after a youth fell off it following climbing over the fence. It was not that simple of course, there were other factors, some self induced,  which caused the youth to fall.

 

Also we have to remember when these structures were built the public were not officially allowed on the towpath, rather like trespassing on railway property now.

I agree that CaRT are in a no win position with Ealth'n'Safety. Their approach seems to be to go completely over the top on a few high profile sites and hope that the rest is ignored. Things like water seeping on to lock stairs and making them lethally slippery can be seen all over the system. The big problem is that the canals were designed centuries before the safety of the work force was even a consideration, let alone random members of the public, who were, as you say, not allowed on the network. Just another example, only a few miles from the Pontycsyllte aquaduct. Towards the end of the Llangollen canal, it is built on an embankment for stretches, with a stone wall up to 30' high. The parapet edging the towpath on these walls is only about two feet high, see picture below, and people could easily tumble over if they stumbled in to it. The numbers of people walking this stretch of towpath has to be amongst the highest on the system Obviously the parapet is far too low, compared with contemporary practice. I see no plans to increase the height of these and it probably won't happen until someone gets killed.

If hobby inland boating was only started now, rather than a continuation of decades of experience, then the public would never be allowed to operate locks on their own, without at least life jackets, helmets, safety footwear, a training course and an exam.

 

JenDSCN0466.JPG.cc6f1ff4dd575ed15b44563b9381c739.JPG

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10 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

If hobby inland boating was only started now, rather than a continuation of decades of experience, then the public would never be allowed to operate locks on their own, without at least life jackets, helmets, safety footwear, a training course and an exam.

 

Yes - we are where we are. CRT is constantly faced with the problem of 21st century expectations and an 18th century technology. Personally I think they are choosing the most practical path through all the noise.

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13 hours ago, dixi188 said:

I don't disagree with railings, just that £1,500,000 seems a lot for 100 yds of railings, I would have thought that some off the shelf stuff could be done for about £100,000.

£1.5 million was the entire cost of an extensive scheme that included works to the aqueduct face (for which the workers had to abseil), channel works, clearance of trees to re-establish historic views. remedial repairs to the structure to maintain stability (it IS 220 years old! And there is evidence of settlement at the Manchester end) and several other bits and pieces - the fence would have to have been made of platinum to cost that much on it's own.

 

 

 

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12 hours ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

(snip)

If hobby inland boating was only started now, rather than a continuation of decades of experience, then the public would never be allowed to operate locks on their own, without at least life jackets, helmets, safety footwear, a training course and an exam.

 

Jen

Bit like Scottish Canals (BWS), then. (Although, to be fair, they don't insist on helmets :) )

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