Warren Branch

[teaky]

18 hours ago, chuffinghell said:

 

Would they still have moored the boat there without a lay-by (apologies if I'm using the wrongs terms)

 

Is that what you meant too @KNP? no lay-by at all?

 

Apologies for being thick

 

Yes.  Simply widening the canal by one or more boat widths was often done.

 

Incidentally,  re: your earlier question about the stable.  It is likely that extra facilities like that would only have been included if the wharf owner also owned the horse(s), or if the owner or wharfinger saw an opportunity to make some additional money from providing such a service.  Even then they would have had to seek permission from the canal company and probably be charged a small amount of extra rent unless it was already written into their contract.

 

It's amazing how canal companies found ways to make small amounts of additional income.  In the early days of telegraph the Worcester and Birmingham canal company agreed to a telegraph company putting up posts alongside the canal and charged rent on every post.  After a number of years they pushed their luck too much though and the telegraph company moved all their posts elsewhere leaving only a few brackets under bridges as evidence they were ever there.

 

[chuffinghell]

On 02/12/2020 at 20:23, LDM34046 said:

That looks much better. I suppose it would be easier if you have a 4mm canal boat to hand? 

 

It arrived this morning....

 

...needs some work but overall it looks okay. It’s only 53ft which is probably wrong but at less that £8 I can cope with that

 

I'm planning on cutting it in half having it emerging from under the bridge

 

They do an open one too which I’m planning on mooring up along side the pump house with a coal delivery is progress (but I’m a long way off that yet)

 

 

 

[Indomitable026]

17 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

It arrived this morning....

 

...needs some work but overall it looks okay. It’s only 53ft which is probably wrong but at less that £8 I can cope with that

 

I'm planning on cutting it in half having it emerging from under the bridge

 

They do an open one too which I’m planning on mooring up along side the pump house with a coal delivery is progress (but I’m a long way off that yet)

 

 

 

Just for information, that’s a horse drawn boat, what became the ‘butty’ boats when the were later operated in pairs with motor boats.

 

So if it’s on the move you either need a horse or a motor boat to pull it...

 

[chuffinghell]

5 minutes ago, Indomitable026 said:

Just for information, that’s a horse drawn boat, what became the ‘butty’ boats when the were later operated in pairs with motor boats.

 

So if it’s on the move you either need a horse or a motor boat to pull it...

 

Out of interest what gives it away as a horse drawn boat

 

sorry it that’s a stupid question 

[Schooner]

As I understand it (warning!), the low cabin height and counter stern with well are the giveaways. 

 

42 minutes ago, Indomitable026 said:

...operated in pairs with motor boats.

Or indeed a horse still:

 

[chuffinghell]

10 minutes ago, Schooner said:

As I understand it (warning!), the low cabin height and counter stern with well are the giveaways. 

 

Or indeed a horse still:

 

Counter stern? Do you mean its got a pointy back end? 

[Indomitable026]

54 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

Out of interest what gives it away as a horse drawn boat

 

sorry it that’s a stupid question 

Not a stupid question.

 

Heres a picture of a motor and butty for comparison. Butty, I think, meaning ‘buddy’ boat...

 

https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/1416/st-austell

 

As I say they worked in pairs in later years.

[Indomitable026]

Here’s a butty being towed by a motor boat on a long rope

 

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3843951

[Schooner]

24 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

Do you mean its got a pointy back end?

 I do

Edited December 4, 2020 by Schooner
Sorry, can't resist a follow up...it's not what I would normally understand by 'counter stern', but does appear to be the accepted name for it

[chuffinghell]

21 minutes ago, Schooner said:

 I do

I thought it might upset a few ‘boaty’ people by calling it the back 

 

My boat no longer has a stern

 

 

I could get two through there!

[MrWolf]

Put a face on it to match Bertie, then you'll have Boaty McBoatface.

 

Or you can be dull and call it RS Sir David Attenborough... 

[chuffinghell]

54 minutes ago, Indomitable026 said:

Not a stupid question.

 

Heres a picture of a motor and butty for comparison. Butty, I think, meaning ‘buddy’ boat...

 

https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/1416/st-austell

 

As I say they worked in pairs in later years.

wonderfull! That link is perfect thank you.

 

I may have to draw one up and get one printed as the only boats commercially available are 70-72ft and I don’t really want anything longer than 54ft which I will no doubt be told is incorrect 

 

Unless I could get away with a coal loaded dumb barge moored up to the pump house being unloaded?

 

I really don’t know, it’s all very stressful and confusing,  I’m slowly loosing  the will to live

 

 

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by chuffinghell

[chuffinghell]

5 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Put a face on it to match Bertie, then you'll have Boaty McBoatface.

 

Or you can be dull and call it RS Sir David Attenborough... 

 

Yes it would go perfectly with Trainy McTrainface and Bussy McBusface!

[chuffinghell]

1 hour ago, Schooner said:

As I understand it (warning!), the low cabin height and counter stern with well are the giveaways. 

 

Or indeed a horse still:

 

Unfortunately it’s been pointed out that I can’t use a hoss because my towpath is on the wrong side in relation to the pump house mooring

[MrWolf]

It's all getting frightfully involved is this canal wharf and barges lark.

 

Submarines are far simpler to model...

 

 

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

56 minutes ago, Indomitable026 said:

...Butty, I think, meaning ‘buddy’ boat...

 

 

I think that the word "butty" has a longer and more venerable history than "buddy", which is a johnny-come-lately from the USA in the 19th century.

 

"butty" - meaning "friend" or "companion" - was very much used in the Wales of my youth, often shortened to "butt", and is also used in parts of the west of England, so I am informed. My great uncles also talked about it being used in the context of coal-face miners who worked in pairs.

 

I can certainly appreciate how "butty" came to be applied to a companion boat as described here...

 

Mike.

 

[Nick C]

If you used the back half rather than the front (so it's going under the bridge instead of emerging) then you could just say it's being towed by another boat...

[Nick C]

8 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

It's all getting frightfully involved is this canal wharf and barges lark.

 

Submarines are far simpler to model...

 

 

 

 

 

But then you'd have someone come along and tell you that they didn't use that particular design of periscope until after the war...

[Joseph_Pestell]

I was watching an old Fred Dibnah programme the other night and he suggested that a motor boat could tow two butties.

 

It might have the necessary power but surely you would not do it. It would be chaotic at locks.

 

[LDM34046]

That canal boat looks smart. Excited to see it in place on the layout. It's slowly transforming into a really interesting part of the layout!

[Schooner]

52 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

 

I really don’t know, it’s all very stressful and confusing,  I’m slowly loosing  the will to live

Yup, that's boats - you've understood perfectly! 

 

44 minutes ago, chuffinghell said:

...I can’t use a hoss...

Even without the old 'there's a prototype for everything' (and there are plenty for a small industrial user on the same side as the towpath), I think you could go with whatever you fancied

[chuffinghell]

36 minutes ago, LDM34046 said:

That canal boat looks smart. Excited to see it in place on the layout. It's slowly transforming into a really interesting part of the layout!

I’m going to come back to the stress that is boats once I’ve finished the canal.

 

now the bridge is in place I can build up the embankment locally to the bridge so I can add the walling the finish the road

 

It seems haphazard but I don’t want to do the road surface until the wall is in place and I don’t want to get any plaster on the wall, hence the strange order of doing things.

 

The rest of the canal won’t be started until many other things are done

[teaky]

1 hour ago, KingEdwardII said:

 

I think that the word "butty" has a longer and more venerable history than "buddy", which is a johnny-come-lately from the USA in the 19th century.

 

"butty" - meaning "friend" or "companion" - was very much used in the Wales of my youth, often shortened to "butt", and is also used in parts of the west of England, so I am informed. My great uncles also talked about it being used in the context of coal-face miners who worked in pairs.

 

I can certainly appreciate how "butty" came to be applied to a companion boat as described here...

 

Mike.

 

And here too.

Edited December 4, 2020 by teaky

[Pacific231G]

21 hours ago, figworthy said:

Looking good, but.

 

At the risk of dropping a large container of spanners into the works, I might have spotted another problem (assuming that you are trying to be accurate).  Going back to the bridge and looking at the above, the towpath is on the top side of the canal.  Having the wharf on that side means that any boat coming past would have to negotiate the tow line past any thing tied up on the wharf, and the crane that close to the bank could make it difficult to get past, so is best avoided.  Unless of course it is the end of the canal (a branch line terminus if you like).  The other problem would be security at the wharf, although (as previously discussed) the canal would be private property, having the towpath run through the wharf makes it more difficult to secure, almost all cargos have a value, would you have a railway goods yard that was wide open ?

 

Adrian

I think you may be overthinking this Adrian. 

Chris there's no reason at all why you can't have a hoss, the side of the canal the pumphouse is on is irrelevant.

 

I live close to the GUC in W. London and, though most were on the far side, there were several factories and warehouses with wharves on the towing path side. The canal wasn't widened to accomodate these as it was already wide enough to enable two boats to pass one another and moored boats with room to spare. A wharf would though generally be wider than the towing path alone.

 

To give a few examples; the pumping station on the Wendover Arm (which actually waters the GUC)  is on the towing path side and in steam days that  would have taken coal from narrow boats or barges.  Further up the GUC, at the south end of Leighton Buzzard, there's an old wharf with inset two foot gauge track on it that used to bring sand from one of the quarries and that's also on the towing path side.

Larger works like timber or steel stockyards often had travelling cranes whose support girders stuck out over the canal but, so long as a crane had a long enough reach to be mounted on the other side of the towpath (which is anyway quite narrow) that would be entirely feasible.

With motorised boats there was obviously no problem but even with horse power,  getting a boat past a moored one was no real problem and actually rather easier than passing another horse drawn boat which of course happened all the time. Boats have a lot of momentum and very little resistance so you'd just slacken the tow, lift it above the moored boat or boats as you passed  and resume the tow once clear.  They often had to to this anyway when the tow path changed sides and though there were ingenious horse bridges that avoided the need to actually drop the tow these were by no means universal. 

 

Bridge 77 on Macclesfield Canal (Lambert's Lane)

© Copyright Martin Lack and licensed for reuse under CC BY-SA 2.0 (share alike)

 

What does strike me about the latest plan (and I'm glad you've got rid of the "layby" as its something I've never seen) is that the canal now seems a tad wide- though the bit under the roadbridge is fine and very nicely modelled. It costs money to cut a canal so, unless they were sharing the bed with a river they weren't any wider than they needed to be which is why they have special winding holes to turn boats around. The bend would be wider to let boats pass but no wider than needed, If you go to the National Library of Scotlands's map collection, any relevant OS 25 inch to the mile map will enable you to estimate the width of various canals and see the arrangement of wharves etc.

 

Also, just because narrow boats could be 70ft long it doesn't follow that they had to be so a 54 ft boat is fine. BTW i you really want to annoy the more fundamentalist canal enthusiasts, just describe a narrow boat as a barge. For some reason it drives them nuts and is almost as much fun as insisting on points and frogs with the PW pedants.   

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Pacific231G

[teaky]

49 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

I was watching an old Fred Dibnah programme the other night and he suggested that a motor boat could tow two butties.

 

It might have the necessary power but surely you would not do it. It would be chaotic at locks.

 

I don't know for certain but a butty could probably be manouvered into and out of a lock by hand using ropes.

 

There are a couple of long tunnels on the northern section of the Worcester and Birmingham canal which do not have have towpaths.  Legging ceased to be an option when traffic levels became too high and the canal company introduced two boats (one at each tunnel) to tow several narrow boats through at a time.  This gradually became unnecessary once motor boats became more common.  No locks involved at these sections though.

 

On wider (barge) canals it wasn't unusual to have a butty tied alongside the motor boat rather than pulled behind.  I have a feeling I've seen a photo of this arrangement with a further butty being towed but I can't swear to that.