"Michael Askin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >I'm sure someone will be along in a moment who knows the details >better than I, but I understand the idea was to have a barge route all >the way to Birmingham. This didn't work out to well, as the cost of >widening the Warwick Canal to full width was deemed too expensive and >so was never made wider than 12 foot?.
AIUI, when the GJ was being built in the 1790s, the company did indeed want its gauge to become a standard, and tried to get companies with canals making junctions to it to adopt that gauge. Unfortunately, it failed, but kept trying long afterwards (e.g. with the Foxton Plane after it bought the Leicester line). Much later, in the 1930s, its successor the GU company persuaded the government to fund an increase in the gauge of the route from Braunston to Birmingham to match that of the GJ. However, the money ran out before the job was finished. The locks were all enlarged, but some bridgeholes and much of the channel remained too tight, resulting in ..... >Wide (or is that broad?) boats were tried, but they weren't very >sucessful, Two wooden "wide boats" (beam 12'6", so they were actually broad in today's terminology) were built, as an experiment to test the route given the work actually carried out. One, Progress, by the GU company, which I think it is on the bank at the stink hole at Harefield. The other, Pioneer, by FMC, now long scrapped. Experience with these showed that there were too many places that two such boats could not easily pass, so this size of craft was infeasible for commercial use north of Braunston. Because trans-shipment from barges to boats at Braunston was uneconomic, GU practice continued to be to use pairs of narrow boats for traffic that used both the (former) GJ and narrow canals, although some traffic that used only the GJ used wider craft. Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
