Waggons roll

I enjoyed this display of a part-built wooden carriage in the waggon workshop. One of my ancestors was listed in one census as a waggon builder...  what he - and my other GWR forebear did primarily we'll come to tomorrow.

STEAM!

For that, sadly, is what the Great Western Railway Museum now feels it has to call itself, which is a bit misleading really, as they don't actually have any real live steam.

It's nine pounds something to get in, which makes it considerably less good value than the National Railway Museum in York, which has a lot more stuff and is free. But that's a national collection, and as such rightfully subsidised by the taxpayer, whereas Swindon's still very significant collection has to pay its way for the local authority. It's moved since I was last there, and now shares a site with an outlet shopping village, or shopping outlet village or whatever the right term is. I should not in fact be sniffy about this, as having arrived a little early for the museum, I killed a happy half hour buying four Monsoon blouses for fifty quid. Not since I worked in Portsmouth has such an opportunity presented itself. The only problem now is that I can't find any skirts I like to go with them - skirts seem to have seriously gone out of fashion - and am reduced to attempting to make one. That, however, is another story.

I do like a recreated room, and I wanted to move into this office.

Then there was the stores...

But no man in a brown coat.

There were plenty of tableaux, big photos, and artfully arranged objets, but not much detail; not much hard history - it's very much a museum in the new mould now and I did feel I would have enjoyed it more if I had been a school party.

Streets of Swindon

The morning after Auntie Doreen's birthday bash, I was determined to visit the GWR museum (now - clearly far more enticingly - called 'STEAM!'), so after Sebastian, Izzi and Rory had departed in the car, I took a slow stroll through a cold by fantastically sunny, quiet Sunday morning in a twon I'd not visited for probably twenty years (at which point I should probably note that cousin Janice doesn't quite live in Swindon, but in nearly Wootton Bassett).

There were some beautiful bits, and some breathtaking ones.

The sheer size of the Works, one building going on forever. Apologies for the stark shadows in the low morning sun.

Somewhere in the works, there is regeneration going on. There was a sign in the window, the usual optimism about craft spaces and cafes. There wasn't much sign of life, but it was a Sunday.

And the streets were deserted.

Still evidence aplenty that this was a company town.

Station to Station

It's a long time since I last visited Swindon, and I look at things differently now. For a town that should be so proud of its railway heritage it has allowed some awful things to befall it.

Auntie Doreen has lived in Swindon all her life. Until she was the age I am now, the sight of the main GWR station would have been recognisable from this rather earlier photo:

Not a flamboyant building, but dignified, and with gravitas.

So of course in 1972 they knocked it down and built this:

Which I'm sure looked nice and shiny for a while, but most assuredly doesn't now.

What I hadn't realised was that until 1961, Swindon had two stations: this one, Swindon Junction, on the Great Western line, and then also Swindon Town, which belonged to the Midland and South Western Junction Railway.

The centenary of my Auntie Doreen

Finally, long-delayed by our trip down the Sheffield canal, the more important centennial celebrations.

On the day the canal was celebrating its first hundred years, February 22nd, 1919, my Auntie Doreen was born in Swindon.

Her father, William George (rather confusingly known as George William) Hale, like her grandfather William George Hale before him, worked as a boilermaker at the GWR Locomotive Works. Her mother, Irma, was from Jersey, and when she first met George, spoke no English. Irma lived until 1985, when she was ninety-nine, but her older daughter has gone one better.

This is George and Irma's wedding in 1916. George was a strict Methodist, a teetotaller and a pacifist, but being in a reserved occupation fortunately didn't have to worry about being a conscientious objector.

The middle child of three, Doreen had an older brother, Leslie - my father, and a younger sister, Ina.

Here they are in the early 1930s.

So, a few weekends ago I met up in Swindon with Sebastian and Izzi and Aurora, to celebrate Auntie Doreen's birthday at her daughter, my cousin Janice's house, where we met up with lots of relatives, some of whom we hadn't seen for ages, including a new second cousin once removed (I think) of mine (and either fourth twice removed or third three times of Rory) who rather marvellously is called William, like his great great great grandfather.

And here is Rory, meeting her great great aunt.

Getting my hands on Naburn

Following a couple of abortive attempts, someone finally got back to me on Tuesday about Naburn. It turns out that Naburn is still owned by CRT after all, and is run by them with volunteer crew to do what sounds largely like amenity improvement on the canal. This of course in one way is, from my point of view, very bad news, in that there will be a high cost entailed in getting involved in this, viz. the wearing of a bloody lifejacket. I wouldn't do it for anything other than a large GU motor.

Anyway, yesterday morning I took a very windy stroll down to the Basin to meet Anthony in the newly furbished and opened CRT office/public interface there. I'm not quite sure he knew what hit him as I engaged him in conversation, and fortunately for him I had to be at work by 9:15 which curtailed me a bit.

I also completed a form to register as a volunteer. The way it seems to work is that jollies on Naburn pulliing shopping trolleys out of the cut are very popular and have to be rationed, especially as there are only three qualified skippers. Most of the volunteers are retired, so not much happens at weekends (when I'm free), and there are fewer skippers available then. So, clearly what they need is more skippers. Ones who are available at the weekend. Me. Apparently two of the three existing ones are volunteers who have just been put through the requisite training by CRT so I have volunteered quite forcefully to do likewise.

I shall keep you posted...

And back to the city

We'd taken so long over our walk down the canal that the sun was setting by the time we got back.

Tomorrow I may have some news to impart relating to last Thursday's post - although it may not be very exciting news.

And so we come to the end

Or what would have been the beginning, had it not been for that obstructive lock keeper back in 2009. Imagine tying Warrior to those bollards there...

Getting the lock ready - it would have felt quite small after some of the ones we'd come through

And in a few more hours, we'd have been in Sheffield and off to the Kelham Island Tavern - which was CAMRA's national pub of the year that year. In fact, I have still never been there, because it's impossible to walk past the Fat Cat.

And I'd have looked back at the River Don, and thought about our journey from Keadby, and the thought of doing all those bloody electric swingbridges again on the way back...

Of course, quite a few people have a full length boat and a short one...

Go west!

West Yorkshire, that is.Today, I've been back in Saltaire, thanks to David Lowe mentioning at the AGM last week that he would be performing today on the Victoria Hall's magnificent Wurlitzer. I even rounded up someone to go with me, and we had a splendid time marvelling at the prices in the Salts Mill antiques shop (I reckon my dining room lights would have at least a £500 tag on them in there), enjoying the splendid tea and cakes available at the concert, and beforehand, in a ten minute lull in the rain and snow, a brief walk up the canal.

Now, the fact that we walked up the canal is significant, because on my two previous visits, I have only gone in the other direction, towards Shipley. Which means that today, for the first time, I saw a Leeds and Liverpool lock.

So I didn't even know that this was a ground paddle. 

Wonder if I'll ever get to operate one...

Canal and river

Sheffield Canal on the right; River Don on the left...

And that reminded me of another photo I tool last year:

Easy, but which canal and river are these?

I'm off out on a jaunt this afternoon, so I might tell you about that tomorrow. Not that it's anywhere I've not been before...

Repairs

I am of course delighted that CRT can afford to spend £25,000 on repairing a 61 metre section of collapsed bank on a scarcely-used section of waterway, through 'the installation of Larsen piles with reinforcing mesh installed into the concrete behind the piles' and a 'new concrete capping beam', and still find a little small change for a massive blue sign to tell us about it.

The cost is clearly incurred not only by the spanking new workboats engaged on the repairs,

but also the man in the hut guarding them.

I wish Marple had re-opened on time though.

And on down we go

A few scenes from the long pound of the Tinsley flight...

But Tinsley what..?

Concrete and waste land...

And a bank collapse?

A boat with an identity crisis

Obviously, what I was most looking forward to on reaching Tinsley top lock (apart from the toilet) was seeing Naburn. Naburn is a cut-down large Northwich, formerly a BW maintenance boat, then leased to a community group, disposed of by BW in 2009, and apparently in community ownership again when I first saw it - completely by surprise - in October 2016. In 2016, Naburn looked like this:

BW workboat cabin and nameplate, and presumably engine...

No cross planks or chains, but shuts and gunnels, and looking like a boat capable of doing some work.

There was a certain inevitably in discovering that Naburn hadn't escaped the blue paint - although thank goodness she's hung on to her BW nameplate -

Or the new-style CRT transfers:

Nor was I terribly surprised that the pre-painting preparation didn't appear to have been all that thorough.

I was slightly more surprised that she had lost her gunnels, and gained a considerable amount of key clamp, including, of course, steps with handrails,

and a gazebo which I would be quite surprised to see go under Bacon Lane bridge. This may have been something to do with the fact that apparently - I have it third hand - this was the conveyance for the brass band which attended the 200th anniversary celebrations (in which case, presumably, it must have negotiated said bridge).

Which brings me to the biggest surprise:

Whilst the cabin is still clearly called Naburn, the fore end appears to have been re-named Industry.

The reason for this presumably being that Industry was the name of the first boat ever to navigate the Sheffield Canal from the River Don into Sheffield, on February 22nd 1819. And what the hell, an old boat's an old boat, isn't it, even if it's a cut-down Grand Union and nothing like a Sheffield keel.

I am currently doing my best to find out who does actually own and run Naburn, and what they use her for (putting blue signs on the wrong bridges, would be one guess), because I really quite fancy getting my hand on the tiller (after all, I passed my Certificate in Community Boat Management on a large Northwich). So far I haven't had any success, but I shall keep you posted.

Back on the Sheffield Canal

As I have just very reliably been informed it is properly called. Apparently it was renamed at the same time as Sheffield Basin became 'Victoria Quays'. I can kind of see the regenerative rationale for the latter, but not sure about the former - it's not as if the people of Tinsley were feeling left out, surely?

Anyway, Margi and I continued our stroll and eventually we arrived at the top lock.

It's always nice to see a lock when you've been away from the cut for a while. The blue sign brigade had made it this far:

But the smaller, shyer, native species hasn't yet been entirely overwhelmed:

Albeit this is the CRT sub-species, not the increasingly rare and threatened BW variant.

Something like a plan

I had begun to doubt whether we would make it to Hebden Bridge, in light of the prolomgued stoppage at Marple, as our timeframe was already very tight.

However, following the AGM - at which Enceladus Sarah persuaded me that it was worth going for the plaque alone - I sat down with my work calendar, a wipe-clean wall planner, Canalplan (which just gets better and better) open on the computer, and the convoy dates in and out of Manchester ...

... And by tweaking and trimming a couple of days here and adding them there, we have something that looks like a plan.

I still have serious reservations, especially about how to keep both Ricky and Geoffrey, with their different needs and natures, both happy and under control. Less concerned perhaps now about the heavy physical work that will be involved, largely because we will be going in pairs, and also because I'm basically going to be steering all the time. As the Boss pointed out, when I sent in my new leave requests, this means I shall be at work for only three days in the month from May 10th to June 10th. It also means I won't have much holiday left for the rest of the year, but apart from that it's almost like old times.

So, got to start preparing in earnest now. Did someone mention new strings?

In chains

Following yesterday's post, Joho asked what the hook on the chimney is for. Well, the simple answer is that it's to attach the chimney chain. That, however, merely leads to the question of what is the chimney chain for? Again, the answer looks straightforward - the obvious function of the chimney chain is to prevent the chimney being lost if it should be knocked off, say by accidentally hitting a bridge with it.

And indeed, if I am boating with the cabin chimney on, which I so sadly rarely these days, I do indeed have a chain for that very purpose. It's a plain brass chain and it runs through the handle of the chimney and clips to the ring attached to the cabin top. What it does not do, is attach to the hook - because frankly, that would not give much protection from falling in.

So, the hook is for the ceremonial chain - much like mayors and aldermen (and women), boats like to put on their finery for big occasions (well, OK, some like to sport it all the time. Joshers mostly).

Now, I am no expert, but off the top of my head I'd say there were two basic models of chimney chain. The one everyone covets is the one where each link is a brass clip that attached the handle to a WW2 (I thought 2; Jim thinks 1 - happy to be set right by anyone who knows for sure) gas mask case. These were salvaged and put together by the boatmen. The other sort - of which Chertsey's is an example - originates from the same source as the horse brasses which usually ornament the chimney chain. (I found mine in an antique shop in Ely.) This presumably arose inevitably from the connection with horse-drawn boats and continued as a form of nostalgia. The next question of course, is why all the brass?  Not just the chains and fittings, but completely non-functional items, like the row of knobs inside the back cabin next to the stove. And the answer is... in order to polish it; to have something on which to bestow your pride.

Here is a selection of chimney chains at Ellesmere Port in 2009.

At the HNBC AGM

And so it came to pass that yesterday I attended the HNBC AGM for what must be around the dozenth time.

Gifford won the Keay award, and Corolla (whose restoration's early beginnings we witnessed at Stretton, oh so long ago), the Hemelryk.

I was unable to source a copy of Hadfield's Yorkshire and the North East, but did get a not-too-old Nicholsons (my current one being on the boat) to accompany me on my next bridge-number-checking foray of the Sheffield canal. Jim also purchased a copy of The Twilight Years of Narrow Boat Carrying: Photographs from the Mike Webb Collection - with captions and commentary by Pete Harrison, who was in attendance for the first time in many years.

Mick on Cassiopaeia returned the handstart decompression widget that he has been copying for Aldgate, and which he has repaired, and I took delivery of two excellent chimneys from Andrew on Dove - a austerely plain engine pipe, and a cabin chimney as brassy and beautiful as anyone could desire.

Andrew's handiwork is outstanding, and while I'm honoured to have had only the second cabin chimneg ever made by Michael Pinnock, now somewhat showing its age, this new one is in a different league entirely.

I asked for the hook to be a heart to echo the one on the slide. The brass on this is really heavy and thick; the overall chimney so much heavier and more solid than the old one.

At the AGM, most of the officers were re-elected to their positions, and there were no contested elections. It was agreed to raise the subs to £20 a year, as the Club made a slight loss on revenue last year, largely because the shop's amazing contribution has been slightly less amazing.

The afternoon - and evening's - entertainment was provided by Eric McDowell, who related 'yarns' of his early days of lockwheeling and helping boatmen, through to his involvement with Three Fellows Carrying on the lime juice. He had some wonderful photos, but I'm afraid his delivery was rather slow and he didn't get to the end of the story before we had to vacate the hall.

I also took the opportunity to catch up with a number of the people who, I hope, have become friends over the past decade or so, and others of whom I am still in awe. I finally spoke to Nick Hill about my ambition to recreate Chertsey's final commercial run for its fiftieth anniversary next year, and have made plans to walk the Sheffield canal again, this time with someone who hasn't visited it since the 1970s, go to an organ concert, and attend a model railway exhibition in September.

There was plentiful cake, in which I over-indulged, and the tea was drinkable (just). Whittington village hall is an excellent venue. Once again, it feels as if the baoting season has just begun. Today, as we pore over CanalPlan and my holiday calendar, we shall see how it might or might not unfold.

A black duck and a peacock

I don't think I've ever seen a duck quite this black.

So, we proceed along the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal (I am milking this for all it's worth) towards the top lock. But first we come to this, seen across the cut:

Frustratingly, the book doesn't give a date for this, but it is the remains of a lift bridge - Peacock Bridge, which carried the colliery railway line from Tinsley Park. The book shows the remains looking scarcely different twenty years ago from how they are today, just without the trees.

Even the landing side is recognisably the same, only slightly more rotten. In 1997 it was apparently 'hoped to restore this bridge in the future.' I'm rather glad they didn't.

We will now take a brief break from our stroll along the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal, but fear not, there is plenty more to come!

Books I read in February

John Le Carre Our Kind of Traitor (local library)
In a different class; the quality of the writing, the knowledge it assumes in the reader. I've had trouble in the distant past following LeCarre's plots, but not this one. Unnerving and moving.

Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train (local library)
Fair-to-middling chick-thriller (yup, that is definitely a genre) on a par with many I've read over the past year, and nowhere near deserving of all the hype.

Donna Leon
By Its Cover
A Noble Radiance
A Question of Belief
The Golden Egg
Drawing Conclusions
(all local library) 
The Temptations of Forgiveness (Kindle)
Earthly Remains (Kindle - downloaded onto the iPad on the train!)
So, I've discovered Donna Leon's Venice detective, Guido Brunetti. In many ways these are classic police procedural - Brunetti has his loyal sidekick, Vianello, plus, latterly Claudia Griffini; he has the classic useless boss, Vice Questore Patta, and the secretary who knows more than anyone else in the place, Signorina Elettra. So it's comforting; you know where you are with it. Leon's writing is good and unflashy. She doesn't play games with flashbacks and forwards; the narrative, always from Brunetti's perspective, unfolds in unhurried chronological order. Brunetti is neither a maverick not a goody-two shoes, but a good man trying to do good in a sometimes murky world. There's more intrigue than suspense; not always a murder, and not always a simple solution - but never, so far, hard to follow. They're just really nicely crafted books with low key, believable characters. She manages to drop in just enough Italian words and phrases (a mobile phone is always a telefonino, which is lovely) to create the atmosphere without labouring it or showing off. And while Venice is ever-present, she doesn't labour that either - but it is very interesting the way she draws out the differences between, say, the Venetian Brunelli, Sicilian Patta, and Neopolitan Griffoni - their differences and their prejudices about each other. There are, I think, twenty-seven books in the series, so I've only read just over a quarter of them. I am very much looking forward to curling up with the rest.

Sam Blake No Turning Back (local library)
Back to the usual - run of the mill Irish-set police thriller, instantly forgettable cybercrime/terrorism; manufactured suspense and too many coincidences. Dull and generally unpleasant.

Ian McGuire The North Water (local library)
There's nothing Booker judges like better than a sordid tale set on board a Victorian ship - a whaler in this case. McGuire does marvellous things with language (much of it exceedingly bad language) only occasionally tipping over the edge into labouring it. The language is the joy of this book; even as it creates the most appalling characters and scenes, and increasingly preposterous events. It does feel a little rushed as it approaches the end, though.