Manchester ship canal railway

[woodenhead]

Swimming in waste water, still a popular and profitable pursuit.

 

[Marshall5]

When I taught in Toxteth in the 70's & 80's the kids used to go to "The Hotties" to catch tropical fish as Brit15 describes. 

Whilst at college I did a project on the MSC and took a lot of photos.  I seem to remember the canal was pretty filthy particularly in the docks and locks where there were oily slicks with a lot of floating debris. I'm pretty sure I still have the photos.

Ray.

[woodenhead]

The basin at the Manchester end became devoid of oxygen, I remember that once they cleaned it up they had to then install pumps to re-oxygenate the basin which was successful.

[Michael Edge]

28 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

 

Didn't a St Helens pet shop tip into the hot canal loads of tropical fish that subsequently bred ? - Rumours of Piranha's at the time !!!!!

 

Brit15

There were all sorts of rumours but I never saw anything.

As for the continuous flow from the Irwell - that was pretty filthy as well from what I remember underneath Exchange/Victoria station.

I think we had very different ideas about pollution in those days and as kids we never worried about it. I was more concerned later when the asbestos scandals emerged, I was one of a large number of small boys who used to sledge down an old colliery tip on pieces of corrugated asbestos...... Well over 60 years ago now and I'm still here though.

[woodenhead]

17 minutes ago, Michael Edge said:

There were all sorts of rumours but I never saw anything.

As for the continuous flow from the Irwell - that was pretty filthy as well from what I remember underneath Exchange/Victoria station.

I think we had very different ideas about pollution in those days and as kids we never worried about it. I was more concerned later when the asbestos scandals emerged, I was one of a large number of small boys who used to sledge down an old colliery tip on pieces of corrugated asbestos...... Well over 60 years ago now and I'm still here though.

I used to sweep up the dust in the garage we had - the walls of the garage being asbestos with some broken panels.

[doilum]

The power station outlet into the river Foss in York was a favourite fishing spot on freezing January Saturdays. It was rumoured that if someone fell into the river Aire men would place bets on whether the unfortunate would drown or dissolve first.  The clever person was the one who invested in the purchase of the fishing rights on the Aire  through Castleford about five years before the clean up started. 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

6 minutes ago, doilum said:

The power station outlet into the river Foss in York was a favourite fishing spot on freezing January Saturdays. It was rumoured that if someone fell into the river Aire men would place bets on whether the unfortunate would drown or dissolve first.  The clever person was the one who invested in the purchase of the fishing rights on the Aire  through Castleford about five years before the clean up started. 

 

 

Clever? Or well-informed "inside job"?

[Moxy]

1 hour ago, Michael Edge said:

As for the continuous flow from the Irwell - that was pretty filthy as well from what I remember underneath Exchange/Victoria station.

 

 

I have similar memories of the Irwell from a school trip to Manchester in 1976.  We parked the school minibus somewhere near Salford station (now Salford Central), overlooking the Irwell.  The first thing that hit us when we got out of the minibus was the stench from the river!  I seem to remember the Irwell was a sort of oily dark grey sludge rather than a river.

[PenrithBeacon]

3 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

A question for those of you who remember the canal in the 1960s (or 1970s):

What was the water quality like? Was it horrendously polluted like the Torrey Canyon had just sunk at Irwell Park? Or not so bad?

These days the canal looks pretty clean and has a thriving population of birds. Not just gulls, but Cormorants, Oystercatchers, Lapwings, Herons, Kingfishers, Grebes, Swans, Geese, Moorhens and a dozen species of duck.

...

 

 

I think the MSC was reasonably clean because the ships used to churn it up, but the rivers and canals that go through Manchester were awful during that era, really nasty. They're a lot better now.

[woodenhead]

3 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

A question for those of you who remember the canal in the 1960s (or 1970s):

What was the water quality like? Was it horrendously polluted like the Torrey Canyon had just sunk at Irwell Park? Or not so bad?

These days the canal looks pretty clean and has a thriving population of birds. Not just gulls, but Cormorants, Oystercatchers, Lapwings, Herons, Kingfishers, Grebes, Swans, Geese, Moorhens and a dozen species of duck.

 

In my model of the canal bank between Barton and Irlam, should I have a filthy toxic slick of water with at best a floating pigeon carcass, or at the other extreme a perching Kingfisher and a nesting pair of Great Crested Grebes? (seen below at Irlam locks last year) Or would it be somewhere in between with a just few hardy gulls?

 

 

 

You need to take a look at Martin Zero on Youtube, he spends a lot of time looking at the history around Manchester with a particular interest in Waterways and the Industrial Revolution.

 

This is his vlog on Pomona and what came before Trafford Park became so heavily industrialised, he talks about the people who took trips down the Irwell to get to Pomona to escape the pollution because Pomona was still a green place then (is again now but a little different).

 

 

[APOLLO]

I worked in and around Warrington Widnes & Runcorn 1974 to 1993 and remember the MSC very well. The Manchester Liner boats just about fit the locks at Latchford, lock size & bridge height determining their size. The water was mucky, and the muck built up behind the sluices at Latchford, and it smelled really awful when the sluices were running.

 

A tale I've told before re the canal. (Cadishead and Latchford bridge thread)

 

Manchester Ship Canal was also busy back then, with Manchester Liners container ships etc. We also had to maintain the two old gas mains UNDER the canal at nearby Stockton Heath, checking and draining the syphons in them once a year. We gave a couple of days notice to MSC to start the electric pumps, as the shafts and tunnels were normally flooded to canal level. It was always early December when we did this - the boss got caught out one year when the syphons flooded and cut off the gas south of the canal over Christmas (before my time).

 

The shafts are shown on this map, three each side.

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/index.cfm#zoom=18&lat=53.37336&lon=-2.58313&layers=168&b=1

 

Young and daft back then, we were kitted out with breathing apparatus, waterproofs and a tin hat. We descended a 100 year old cast iron ladder in a shaft packed with intertwined GPO & electricity cables, then walked under the canal. Very, very wet, electric pumps running all the time, like being in a submarine when a ship went overhead. Then one day the safety officer came to take a look - after the kittens were born he instantly banned us from going down, and "other arrangements" had to be made to keep the gas flowing south of the canal - at close to a million £ cost !!.

 

Brit15

Edited January 28, 2021 by APOLLO

[APOLLO]

Another call out job was a leak on the pipe supplying the "lock heaters" on the swing bridge at Stockton Heath. Fitted on the bridge abutments (obviously !!) their job was to stop the swing bridge locks freezing in winter. Dangling over the canal was not nice, the bridge being in open (to canal) mode for access and a rush to make a temporary repair !!!

 

The MSC railway had gone at Latchford well before my days but it's route was visible as a dirt road. The railway ended just past Stockton Heath going west as the Canal there has a overflow sluice /small lock from / into the river Mersey alongside.

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/index.cfm#zoom=16&lat=53.37396&lon=-2.59015&layers=168&b=1

 

The whole canal intertwined with the River Mersey / Irwell, which both fed it and drained excess water in times of flood. it all works today. The Ship Canal can never be filled in as all of Warrington would twin Venice !!

 

Damn clever were the Victorians !!

 

Brit15

Edited January 28, 2021 by APOLLO
typo

[doilum]

3 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

Clever? Or well-informed "inside job"?

As children we tried hard to keep a straight face when grandad ( born 1895,) harked on about watching the returning salmon leaping the Weir in his childhood. We remember the early 1960s when a combination of high river level, weir and easterly wind created a foul smelling foam that could completely cover cars in the adjacent road. The weir now has a salmon ladder, who knows, I may live to see the return of granddad's salmon.

Edited January 28, 2021 by doilum

[Michael Hodgson]

Whilst I lived in the area, the Irwell in Manchester was reported to be the most polluted river in the country.   I went to school in Stockton Heath in the late 1950s and remember reading with amazement a report in the Warrington Guardian of a salmon (not salmonella!) that had made its way up the Mersey.  OK, so it wasn't at all well.  There was a fair old stink from Greenall Whitleys and Walkers breweries in the town.  At times the outfall from the Crosfields factory into the Mersey generated foam 3 feet thick and also emitted steam.  By comparison the Ship Canal looked clean despite whatever got pumped out of bilges - though as noted above Latchford locks accumulated oil and general debris.  My little brother used to catch perch and roach in the much cleaner Bridgewater Canal.  These are both apparently edible species, but you would not have risked doing so at the time.  

[woodenhead]

Mersey is certainly cleaner now, they have Salmon cages to let them climb at weirs

[montyburns56]

2 hours ago, APOLLO said:

The MSC railway had gone at Latchford well before my days but it's route was visible as a dirt road. The railway ended just past Stockton Heath going west as the Canal there has a overflow sluice /small lock from / into the river Mersey alongside.

 

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/index.cfm#zoom=16&lat=53.37396&lon=-2.59015&layers=168&b=1

 

The whole canal intertwined with the River Mersey / Irwell, which both fed it and drained excess water in times of flood. it all works today. The Ship Canal can never be filled in as all of Warrington would twin Venice !!

 

 

I visited that area between the Mersey and the Walton Lock a few years ago and the connection still exists but has it has virtually dried up.

 

 

[Mol_PMB]

I have really enjoyed all these reminiscences- many thanks! Gives me much more of a feeling of what the canal was like 50-odd years ago. 

[Mol_PMB]

I went out to Barton Bridge yesterday afternoon to see a couple of small vessels coming up the canal.

The bridge got stuck half-cocked! It was like this for at least 20 minutes until I got bored and went home again.

I know it sometimes gets stuck when it expands in the heat, but that's hardly likely to be a problem in January.

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

I remember the bridges used to get stuck in hot weather, but I thought that was a problem between the bridge deck and the bank - either moving it allow ships to proceed or more often swinging it back to allow the road to reopen.  In the half-open position I suspect it was a problem with the drive mechanism.

 

Note the fence in that shot - it's not a gate to stop people falling off the bridge deck, it's an anti-climb measure to prevent climbing up the white-painted top girders.

[Sandhole]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

I went out to Barton Bridge yesterday afternoon to see a couple of small vessels coming up the canal.

The bridge got stuck half-cocked! It was like this for at least 20 minutes until I got bored and went home again.

I know it sometimes gets stuck when it expands in the heat, but that's hardly likely to be a problem in January.

 

 

I think the phrase...
"OH !"
Is appropriate.

[Mol_PMB]

 I recently bought a copy of 'Trains Illustrated' from October 1959, which contains an 8-page article on the MSC Railways as they were at that time.

Some interesting photos from the late 1950s are included among the text. The attached two were taken at Ellesmere Port and show two big saddle tanks (one a Hudswell Clarke, the other might be an Austerity?) handling a variety of oil tank wagons.

Unlike the eastern portion of the MSC Railway, the Ellesmere Port section did use brakevans and two of them are visible in these photos. Does anyone recognise the origins of these?

The 'toplights' in the van section of the left-hand one reminded me of that currently being scratchbuilt beautifully by @airnimal in this thread, but it's not the same. 

 

These two brakevans were replaced in 1962 with a pair of newer vehicles numbered MSC 6372 and 6373; I think those were of the LMS diagram D1658 (MR design) represented by the Parkside PS111 kit.

 

Despite the availability of MSC brakevans here, the 1959 article says, "There is no domestic rail connection between the Manchester Ship Canal Company's estates at Stanlow and Ellesmere Port, and any traffic or light engines passing between these two sections have to do so over B.R. metals between Ellesmere Port East and West Junctions. Trains are allowed to travel from one junction to another without a brakevan, but the last vehicle must carry a red flag by day and a tail lamp by night."

 

Hope that's of interest to some.

[Mol_PMB]

I think the right-hand brakevan may be one of these LNWR diagram 17A vehicles:

https://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Wagons/brakes/Diag017A.php

And the right-hand one may be a modifed LNWR diagram 17B:

https://www.lnwrs.org.uk/Wagons/brakes/Diag017B.php

for which there is a 7mm scale kit:

https://www.gladiatormodels.com/product.php/lnwr_-_lms_crystal_palace_brake_van__d17b_cfp/?k=:::2719763

 

Must remind myself I do not need a brakevan!

[Mol_PMB]

This morning’s railway activity on the banks of the canal:

 

[woodenhead]

Is this going to be a regular flow?

[Mol_PMB]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Is this going to be a regular flow?

Today was a trial, and I believe there is another trial booked for Saturday.

Today did not run entirely smoothly, neither the rail operations nor the unloading process. Still, debugging things is the point of trials.

 

I don't know if it will be regular. However, it has been planned since last autumn at least. I suspect it is a response to Brexit - for the last 5 years cement has been supplied by ship from Ireland, but that may now have additional tariffs/taxes/duties applied. Bringing it by rail from Scotland may be cheaper.

 

Ironically, this cement handling facility was originally constructed for exporting English cement from Castleton. Such are the 'benefits' of the market economy.