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Re: OT but fantastic news!

"John Williamson" <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:6i9ctlFp118sU1@mid.individual.net...
> Roland Perry wrote:
>> In message <6i89rhFpf2d6U1@mid.individual.net>, at 21:20:02 on Wed, 3 Sep
>> 2008, John Williamson <johnwilliamson@btinternet.com> remarked:
>>> Oh, & while the WTD applies, time spent on the vessel while sleeping
&
>>> eating doesn't count, so a crew of 4 can be moving 24 hours a day, 6
>>> days a week.
>>>
>>> It *could* work, according to this envelope I've just covered in
>>> calculations.
>>
>> A crew of one isn't practical for a lot of the locks through which I
>> assume you'd be trying to get two boats one after the other. If there was
>> only one boat there wouldn't be enough room for 4 people to live...
>
> If the infrastructure is updated, then single manned working through a
> lock is easy. When I was living on a boat, I could go through a modern
> lock very nearly as quickly on my own as a crew of 2, if it was set my way
> to start with.
>
> The convention was to use a motor & a butty, to help the movement of 50
> tons of goods using a single 10 or 20 horsepower engine. The normal
> working crew was a steerer for each boat & someone on a bike to set the
> locks. Between locks, the boats were lashed side by side, so only one
> steerer was needed. On wide canals, such as the Grand Union & the Leeds &
> Liverpool, they used wide boats. So, you need one steerer between locks &
> one lockwheeler who helps at locks, & the lockwheeler could be replaced by
> a lockkeeper, so you only need one person per boat, plus one person per
> lock.
>

Not on the Grand Union I believe. All the references seem to state the same,
that the full widening (that required for wider boats to pass anywhere in
the canal, at bridges etc) was never completed  beyond Berkhamsted, and the
intended fleet of wide boats never went into production, notwithstanding
some early trials, so they stayed with paired boat and butty.

Even now the GU 'gauge' is declared 14ft only as far as Berkhamsted, the
rest of
the way to Camphill it's only 12 ft.

Paul

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