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7 hours ago, Heartland said:

As stated there were craft used in the Cement Run, from Stockton, it is possible that the Board roundel was used on those craft.

BANSTEAD and TOW were the last pair that British Waterways Board operated on the cement between the Kayes Arm and Sampson Road. This photograph from the mid 1960's shows there was no roundel on BANSTEAD as it passes the Black Bouy / Black Boy near Knowle :captain:

 

2105691798_LIONBANSTEADatBlackBoy(1).jpg.8fbb68d3ff53ba183bcb5db63e503f57.jpg

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If that's narrow boats sorted out, does anyone know of any colour pictures of Leeds & Liverpool short boats after nationalisation? There is the Bacup at Ellesmere Port, which has an elaborate livery; but the black and white pictures of short boats, such as this one of Ribble loading machinery at Church, don't seem to have an elaborate paint job at all.

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I think this photo belongs to CRT Archive.

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This is probably the best colour photo (by John Gavan) showing BW livery on a short boat. By this time Severn was working on bank maintenance, but had not been repainted. There are very few colour photos of L&LC boats, even though traditional painting continued at boatyards until around 1960. The steel boats always had much less decoration than the wooden ones. I was certainly fortunate to met Sam Yates, who did the painting at Whitebirk, so that the tradition could be recorded in some detail.

Edited to say that I can't recall seeing photos of two identical schemes for Canal Transport or BW boats.

Severn, Chorley, John Gavan.jpg

Edited by Pluto
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So by the time the instruction made its way north, it had become,"All the boats have to be dark blue,now. Oh, and there has to be some yellow lining".

 

Makes a traditional BW job on Ribble hardly worth the bother.

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The steel boats always had much less decoration than the wooden ones. L&LC dockyards were geared towards maintaining wooden boats, and would have had one boatbuilder who could also undertake the traditional paintwork. The steel boats were usually maintained at Wigan, where a new dockyard and maintenance yard was built in the early 1950s. Paintwork would have come pretty low down in priorities at the new yard. The privately-owned boats employed on the wigan Power Station traffic were painted by a local signwriter, and did not have the proper traditional decoration, just a cheap interpretation. Tarleton and Whitebirk were the last yards where traditional painting was done properly, though I am not sure of who was employed at Bank Hall in Liverpool by Parkes.

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5 hours ago, Pluto said:

The steel boats always had much less decoration than the wooden ones. L&LC dockyards were geared towards maintaining wooden boats, and would have had one boatbuilder who could also undertake the traditional paintwork. The steel boats were usually maintained at Wigan, where a new dockyard and maintenance yard was built in the early 1950s. Paintwork would have come pretty low down in priorities at the new yard. The privately-owned boats employed on the wigan Power Station traffic were painted by a local signwriter, and did not have the proper traditional decoration, just a cheap interpretation. Tarleton and Whitebirk were the last yards where traditional painting was done properly, though I am not sure of who was employed at Bank Hall in Liverpool by Parkes.

So do you think BW simply forgot they had trade in the North, or had none of them ever been further north than Watford, so they didn't know the boats weren't narrow boats? Considering the uniformity of livery of the narrow boat fleet, it seems odd that the yards up here were left to do pretty much what they felt like.

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Trade on the L&LC was more intensive than on narrow canals, so the boats were worked harder, giving less time for attention to paintwork. CTLtd boats were averaging 450 miles per week around 1953, when the canal was carrying something like 500,000 tons annually, probably with around 50-60 boats in service.

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On 31/08/2017 at 11:15, Laurence Hogg said:

Were they? I think not. A curved stencil guide was used for "British Waterways" based on a GUCCCo cabin side which is why on some boats (FMC) it looks wrong. The house emblem was a transfer both in DIWE and BTC/BW cases.

Bulls Bridge had a resident sign writer as did other depots. Transfers were used later on for the castle panels and some rose clusters but that was in the late 1950's for River class boats.

As an aside Bradley used stencils for all their lettering right through until the later light blue BW livery.

do any of there stencils still exist? or anyone have a photo of one? I would love to make a copy! I mean it I want to make a copy!

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