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March of the Widebeams


cuthound

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Ive steered a wide beam trip boat with a tiller on the GU, and a wheel ‘steered’ one. Of course neither had bow thrusters, and only between brentford and rickmansworth.

The tiller steer was ok, the wheel steer was russian roulette. No steering feel impossible in reverse and turned sharp left or right if you went aground. If you slowed down the wave coming back under the boat made it uncontrollable.

To be avoided at all cost...

 

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I used to take my Thames tug 'Silverlit' up the bottom part of the GU and around the London ring in the early 1980's. With a beam of 12'6" and 4' draught it was no problem. However I needed to slow right down past the very few moored boats on the cut. The black flow around the boat was something else. Would be interesting to try it now.

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I have just reached Camp Hill Locks on the GU coming up from Brentford with my 11ft WB with not too many problems. The main ones being low water levels and lots and lots and lots of offside vegetation that is in need of cutting back, doesn’t do much for the paint work.

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17 hours ago, doratheexplorer said:

Except it's not as easy as you might think.  Someone I know is sort of a bit famous, enough to have a wikipedia page.  The page has a number of minor mistakes and one huge whopper of a lie (nothing illegal or libellous, just utterly ridiculous).  When they tried to get it changed, wikipedia asked for comprehensive proof of who they were before allowing it.  Eventually they relented and the mistakes were rectified.  A week later, the original errors were added back in.

Philip Roth was famously considered not a good enough source to correct an entry about one of his own books.

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20 hours ago, matty40s said:

You would have to ask them, however, tiller steered narrowboats on the GU tend to go in a straight line, not bounce from bank with bow thrusting joy.

Not the Alvechurch hire boat which ran into Sickle when moored on the wharf outside High House Wharf, just after it had come out of the paint dock, and before we had even seen it.

 

This, (as you know) is straight and wide, but apparently they were witnessed as swerving and heading straight at our back end.

 

And yes, I have complained to the hire company.

 

There are some daft comments above - I would complain if anyone hit our boat and did damage, provided i had a witness for who did the hitting.  Obviously though those giant wheel steed monsters on an unsuitable canal, and in the hands of those who are clueless, are far more likely to cause these kind of issues.  The wheel steered ones seem to have far more trouble not hitting things than the tiller steed ones, in my experience, even if this means a steerers mate positioned on each side to actually advise where the sides of the boat are versus things likely to get hit.

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6 minutes ago, alan_fincher said:

This, (as you know) is straight and wide, but apparently they were witnessed as swerving and heading straight at our back end.

In an attempt to avoid the behemoth coming directly at them? ?

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20 hours ago, WotEver said:

Yep, if you edit a page you need to regularly check it because the eejit who originally wrote the ‘wrong’ stuff may well return and put it back. 

In this case, I think I'm fighting a losing battle. Even Scottish Canals describe it as "a contour canal"!

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1 hour ago, Iain_S said:

In this case, I think I'm fighting a losing battle. Even Scottish Canals describe it as "a contour canal"!

I'm intrigued Iain. Please could you expand and also tie in that rather nice diagram depicting a Mathematical Canal under the bridge beside your mooring?

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2 minutes ago, Up-Side-Down said:

I'm intrigued Iain. Please could you expand and also tie in that rather nice diagram depicting a Mathematical Canal under the bridge beside your mooring?

My understanding of a contour canal is one that follows the contour, minimising earthworks. Probably best example is the South Oxford, which can easily be compared to the North Oxford, which was originally contour, but was later straightened, cutting out many loops, etc.  Most contour canals are early builds, before the builders had experience in extensive ground works such as cuttings and embankments. "Contour canal" does not denote a lack of locks.

 

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Union is a late build. It has 3 major aqueducts, and for much of its route is either on an embankment or in a cutting. I'm not entirely sure where the "mathematical canal" description comes from, but it may well be from the extensive calculations necessary to balance the soil needed for embankments with the soil removed from cuttings. The canal may follow the present 240'  contour, but the contour is created by the canal.

 

I haven't seen the "contour canal" description prior to publication of Jean Lindsay's "Canals of Scotland", where she uses that description (in my view, a rare error). Scottish Canals state that the Union is a contour canal, because it has no locks until Falkirk. Lock free does not equal contour, however!

 

The artwork under the bridge is part of the Kirkhill Pillar project : a re-creation of the scale model of the solar system originally centred on Kirkhill House and commisioned by the 11th Earl of Buchan in 1776. The new one has the sun at Broxburn Academy and the diagram is the representation of Saturn.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/The-Solar-System-in-West-Lothian

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2 minutes ago, Iain_S said:

My understanding of a contour canal is one that follows the contour, minimising earthworks. Probably best example is the South Oxford, which can easily be compared to the North Oxford, which was originally contour, but was later straightened, cutting out many loops, etc.  Most contour canals are early builds, before the builders had experience in extensive ground works such as cuttings and embankments. "Contour canal" does not denote a lack of locks.

 

 

Perhaps the Ashby is an even better example.

As for the South Oxford, it has a modicum of locks, but I wonder how many more it would have had to have if it had ploughed straight across the map rather than wiggling around so much.

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8 minutes ago, Athy said:

As for the South Oxford, it has a modicum of locks, but I wonder how many more it would have had to have if it had ploughed straight across the map rather than wiggling around so much.

That would depend on how many aqueducts and how many and how long tunnels.  It would be almost lock-free if it didn't have to climb up to Fenny, then back down.  But at what cost ?  It got as far as Banbury before the money ran out.  The Banbury - Oxford section was built 'on the cheap' and it still shows.

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3 minutes ago, Chris Williams said:

That would depend on how many aqueducts and how many and how long tunnels.  It would be almost lock-free if it didn't have to climb up to Fenny, then back down.  But at what cost ?  It got as far as Banbury before the money ran out.  The Banbury - Oxford section was built 'on the cheap' and it still shows.

Yes, perhaps I should have said "locks, hackerducks and tunnel" - though, lest we forget, there was a tunnel at Fenny Compton. I don't know how much of what is known as "Fenny Tunnel" was in fact covered; I suspect that it was just the few hundred yards at the Southern end, which is the only part which is too narrow to allow two boats to pass.

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6 minutes ago, Athy said:

Yes, perhaps I should have said "locks, hackerducks and tunnel" - though, lest we forget, there was a tunnel at Fenny Compton. I don't know how much of what is known as "Fenny Tunnel" was in fact covered; I suspect that it was just the few hundred yards at the Southern end, which is the only part which is too narrow to allow two boats to pass.

The tunnel was 1,138 yards long, 12′ high and 9′ wide. There were wooden blocks with rings every 12′ on both sides and every so often passing points 16′ wide. 
The tunnel, however, was a source of delay, but in 1838 the opportunity arose to purchase part of the land over the tunnel. Over the next two years £3964 was spent opening up part of the tunnel at both ends and in the middle, leaving two detached sections of 336 yards and 452 yards. Finally in 1865 the company started opening up the rest, the work being completed in 1870. 
 

tunnel.jpg

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3 minutes ago, Chris Williams said:

The tunnel was 1,138 yards long, 12′ high and 9′ wide. There were wooden blocks with rings every 12′ on both sides and every so often passing points 16′ wide. 
The tunnel, however, was a source of delay, but in 1838 the opportunity arose to purchase part of the land over the tunnel. Over the next two years £3964 was spent opening up part of the tunnel at both ends and in the middle, leaving two detached sections of 336 yards and 452 yards. Finally in 1865 the company started opening up the rest, the work being completed in 1870. 
 

tunnel.jpg

Fascinating, thanks. So it really was a tunnel all the way along. It must have been pretty grim. It can still be eerie in certain weather conditions.

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2 hours ago, Athy said:

Perhaps the Ashby is an even better example.

As for the South Oxford, it has a modicum of locks, but I wonder how many more it would have had to have if it had ploughed straight across the map rather than wiggling around so much.

On that basis, the Shroppie would be a contour canal!

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3 hours ago, jakk said:

That is so old school. Rule number one before touching the controls is to whip the camera phone out.

I haven't got one, but I  do have a camera. What is the reason for doing so? In case there is a serious accident and the police need evidence?

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On 16/07/2019 at 16:04, Iain_S said:

My understanding of a contour canal is one that follows the contour, minimising earthworks. Probably best example is the South Oxford, which can easily be compared to the North Oxford, which was originally contour, but was later straightened, cutting out many loops, etc.  Most contour canals are early builds, before the builders had experience in extensive ground works such as cuttings and embankments. "Contour canal" does not denote a lack of locks.

 

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Union is a late build. It has 3 major aqueducts, and for much of its route is either on an embankment or in a cutting. I'm not entirely sure where the "mathematical canal" description comes from, but it may well be from the extensive calculations necessary to balance the soil needed for embankments with the soil removed from cuttings. The canal may follow the present 240'  contour, but the contour is created by the canal.

 

I haven't seen the "contour canal" description prior to publication of Jean Lindsay's "Canals of Scotland", where she uses that description (in my view, a rare error). Scottish Canals state that the Union is a contour canal, because it has no locks until Falkirk. Lock free does not equal contour, however!

 

The artwork under the bridge is part of the Kirkhill Pillar project : a re-creation of the scale model of the solar system originally centred on Kirkhill House and commisioned by the 11th Earl of Buchan in 1776. The new one has the sun at Broxburn Academy and the diagram is the representation of Saturn.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/article/The-Solar-System-in-West-Lothian

Thank you for clarifying that Iain. So nothing whatsoever to do with the 'mathematical' nature of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Union Canal then ...........and, as part of a scale model of the solar system, everything to do with a similar example set out along the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal! It would explain why I've struggled for so long to form a connection which had never existed!!

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23 hours ago, frangar said:

Having just come along the Soar it seems that the first rule of widebeam ownership is you must moor on a lock landing....and the uglier your fat narrowboat the more entitled you feel to do this....

We too have just come down the Soar and totally agree with you. Gawd help any single hander trying to ascend some of the locks!

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