That sort of messed with the plan

[Mick Dempsey]

Canals are fascinating.

A country where the infrastructure depended on these waterways, then disappeared along with its world of workers, horses et al almost overnight with the coming of the railways.

The Wey and Arun canal is in my home turf in the UK, they’re renovating as much as they can of it over the last 40 odd years, lots of volunteer work.

A real window to the past.

 

[eggsarascal]

I’m sure I read somewhere that low bridges were mitigated by working boats always being loaded to the gunwales keeping them low in the water, the only time they were empty was when they got to there destination, they were then loaded again for the onward/return journey. There’s a saying, can’t remember it exactly but it’s along the lines of, a bird should be to perch on the gunwales and drink from the cut.

[Canal Navvy]

In hindsight it's lucky that the government department British Waterways didn't have the powers to stop public protest that is available today, these days they would have been able to achieve their task and the whole network would have been infilled and sold off piecemeal.

[eggsarascal]

4 hours ago, Mick Dempsey said:

Just dig the canals deeper under the tunnels!

Ya can’t get CaRT to dredge in most places, never mind dig out, yes I know it was a joke. It is a p1ss take though, pleasure boaters and live aboards pay strong money to have their boats on the cut and the government are cutting funding to CaRT. 

[Dan Maynard]

6 hours ago, Treewolf said:

The advantage of a canal is that very little energy is required to move payload compared to almost all other forms of transport.

Makes sense. Musing really, problem seems to be the amount of man days it needs to move a load. On the Rhine the boats I saw are much bigger so one man moves many lorry loads at once, divides the labour cost per tonne back down again.

[Stere]

This mighy be of interest to some

 

Electric trolley canal boats:

 

Trolley canal boats

WWW.LOWTECHMAGAZINE.COM

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For many centuries, canal boats were propelled by men, horses or mules on the towpath beside the water. Before diesel...

 

 

Quote

All the above is more than a gallery of obsolete technology. Canal transport is already one of the most energy-efficient ways to transport goods. For every litre of fuel burned, a barge can carry a tonne of cargo for 127 kilometres (79 miles), compared to 97 km (60 miles) for a train and 50 km (31 miles) for a truck (source). Electrifying canals could boost this efficiency even further, bringing the possibility of a zero-emission transport system within reach.

These days many canals have reinforced banks, so trolley systems with a propeller would no longer pose a problem. However, especially interesting are those systems in which traction happens on land instead of in the water (all systems excluding a propeller), because they are extremely energy-efficient.

To move a barge of a certain tonnage at low speeds, an electric mule (or any of the other systems described) needs an engine at least 4 times less powerful than when this engine would be placed on the boat itself, propelling a screw (source). Wheels are more efficient than propellers. This means that for every litre of fuel, a barge towed by a machine on the banks or via a chain on the bottom of the canal could carry a tonne of cargo for 500 kilometres (310 miles) - ten times more efficient than a truck or lorry.

 

[Johnsond]

7 hours ago, Stere said:

This mighy be of interest to some

 

Electric trolley canal boats:

 

Trolley canal boats

WWW.LOWTECHMAGAZINE.COM

---

For many centuries, canal boats were propelled by men, horses or mules on the towpath beside the water. Before diesel...

 

 

 

Interesting post with some decent information but let’s get away from the fantasy that is “ net zero “ or in this case a zero emissions transport system, the truth is there never can be such a thing or indeed “ net zero” at all every single item comes at an environmental cost, it’s how we manage that which is the key.