That sort of messed with the plan

[Johnsond]

39 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

Yeah tidy work, my mate was telling me a culvert collapsed about a mile away from there last year, it was a six week stoppage. Fortunately for him he was on the right side of that collapse. 

The whole canal network is I think an underused system. Surely in this day and age with all the green environmental emphasis a well thought out programme utilising  larger canals based around iso containers could shift huge amounts of freight from one area to another rather than the never ending night time road based trunking operations. 

[eggsarascal]

24 minutes ago, Johnsond said:

The whole canal network is I think an underused system. Surely in this day and age with all the green environmental emphasis a well thought out programme utilising  larger canals based around iso containers could shift huge amounts of freight from one area to another rather than the never ending night time road based trunking operations. 

Yes I agree, and believe it or not there still are plenty of work boats on the network. The narrow canals of the Midlands are the pinch point. We’ve also all got use to the ‘just on time’ approach, that doesn’t work on the inland waterways, lack of water at times and stoppages like the one I posted just don’t allow it, not to mention the lack of underinvestment in the cut, which like most things doesn’t make sense, more and more people are paying to use the network yet less maintenance is being done.

[daveatdave]

how do they seal the sides of the temporary dam 

[Johnsond]

5 hours ago, eggsarascal said:

Yes I agree, and believe it or not there still are plenty of work boats on the network. The narrow canals of the Midlands are the pinch point. We’ve also all got use to the ‘just on time’ approach, that doesn’t work on the inland waterways, lack of water at times and stoppages like the one I posted just don’t allow it, not to mention the lack of underinvestment in the cut, which like most things doesn’t make sense, more and more people are paying to use the network yet less maintenance is being done.

My own view in this is a total reconstruction and development of a dedicated system based upon the ability to load/offload iso containers at say inland container terminals. A barge wide/long enough to carry say 20-30 containers does not require a huge depth of water to operate in or power to move if tide etc is not an issue, just a pipe dream eggs but why the hell not eh,we spunked billions on hs2 and even more on covid 🤷‍♂️. This country has zero vision or long term strategy any more, we seem to be more concerned about lgbtq+ bollocks  and a multitude of other crap than anything. 

[eggsarascal]

1 hour ago, Johnsond said:

My own view in this is a total reconstruction and development of a dedicated system based upon the ability to load/offload iso containers at say inland container terminals. A barge wide/long enough to carry say 20-30 containers does not require a huge depth of water to operate in or power to move if tide etc is not an issue, just a pipe dream eggs but why the hell not eh,we spunked billions on hs2 and even more on covid 🤷‍♂️. This country has zero vision or long term strategy any more, we seem to be more concerned about lgbtq+ bollocks  and a multitude of other crap than anything. 

With a draft of 2’6” you are dragging ya arse on the bottom on a lot of inland waterways, it’s just never going to happen. We can’t sort out freight on rail which took over from the cut. It would/could work but as you say, no long term thinking. When you’ve got network rail bosses taking internal flights weekly because the rail network is so unreliable…

[Johnsond]

1 hour ago, eggsarascal said:

With a draft of 2’6” you are dragging ya arse on the bottom on a lot of inland waterways, it’s just never going to happen. We can’t sort out freight on rail which took over from the cut. It would/could work but as you say, no long term thinking. When you’ve got network rail bosses taking internal flights weekly because the rail network is so unreliable…

You are unfortunately probably correct in much of what you say, increase the beam a bit and the load capacity would increase massively as well you know. I look around and despair at how things are panning out in the UK nowadays, especially after the last few years of madness. 

[eggsarascal]

19 minutes ago, Johnsond said:

You are unfortunately probably correct in much of what you say, increase the beam a bit and the load capacity would increase massively as well you know. I look around and despair at how things are panning out in the UK nowadays, especially after the last few years of madness. 

As I mentioned, the Midlands snookers it, to get around the vast majority of the network 57’ long and a beam of 7’ is maxed out. Like lots of our national assets the cut has been given away to a ‘charity’ who’s directors earn a small fortune every year. The thing is, the work boats on the cut earn damn good money. I was talking to the lads on the fuel boat at Longport Wharf a few weeks ago, they said they’d never had it so good, bang in the middle of summer!

[Johnsond]

44 minutes ago, eggsarascal said:

As I mentioned, the Midlands snookers it, to get around the vast majority of the network 57’ long and a beam of 7’ is maxed out. Like lots of our national assets the cut has been given away to a ‘charity’ who’s directors earn a small fortune every year. The thing is, the work boats on the cut earn damn good money. I was talking to the lads on the fuel boat at Longport Wharf a few weeks ago, they said they’d never had it so good, bang in the middle of summer!

The lack of vision includes the lack of ability to look beyond the current narrow option 

Easy  sorted but probably way too out the box for the totally gutless nation we’ve become. 

[Johnsond]

2 hours ago, eggsarascal said:

As I mentioned, the Midlands snookers it, to get around the vast majority of the network 57’ long and a beam of 7’ is maxed out. Like lots of our national assets the cut has been given away to a ‘’ whose directors earn a small fortune every year. The thing is, the work boats on the cut earn damn good money. I was talking to the lads on the fuel boat at Longport Wharf a few weeks ago, they said they’d never had it so good, bang in the middle

 

 

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by Johnsond

[monkeybusiness]

The lack of vision for anything in the UK is hampered by our shitty parliamentary system and the subsequent short-term ‘try to hold onto power through whatever means at the next election’ mentality.