Barry and Brian wrote about foot boards on the Aylesbury Arm. The Aylesbury Arm locks have no foot boards as the crossing is on the balance beam ( head and tail) and they never have been fitted in my experience (1979 onwards). BW regularly claim the gates are made to original pattern- even though the Bradley ones are obviously different to the Bulbourne ones and despite the top cross beam on the upper gates at several locks being too high so that it is impossible to achieve a level when there's lots of water about.
There's nearly always lots of water too, both because 1&2 are a staircase and because once the Wilstone/Startopsend reservoirs are full all the surplus end up in the Arm. Still, with lots of water coming over the top shutting the bottom gates is easy if you use a short shaft on the beams as you go out. Regards Nigel [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
