"Neil Arlidge" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >ansonpowell wrote: >> Hi all >> >> >> >> IIRC the barge Progress, built for use on the Grand Union, still >> survives. Does anyone know its whereabouts as I would like to take a >> picture of it. >> >> >> >> Mike >> >> Nb Joanna > >Was this a metal one???
No, it was/is wooden. Last I heard (~five years ago), it was at the Stinkhole, hauled out supposedly for restoration but actually just sitting. I've no idea of its current condition, but Di Murrell once told me that when they owned it some years before that the hull was deteriorating seriously. Although technically a barge (No! Please let's not restart that), it was/is actually a "wide boat" (which really confuses the broad/wide terminology), as it is like a wider narrow boat. It has a beam of about 3.8 m, and was built to test the feasibility of craft that wide as a replacement for narrow boats on the Braunston - Birmingham run after the contstruction of wide locks on that route in the 1930s. The test failed, as it turned/turns out that there are too many places on the route where two such craft have trouble passing to make it feasible for a significant volume of such traffic. FMC built its own version, Pioneer, at the same time, but it is long gone. >(his mum showed me a piccy of her parents on a riveted GUCC wide boat) There were quite a few such craft on the Grand Junction, right from the start, although the earlier ones were all wooden. I think various beams were used. I would interested in seeing that picture. Do you know the name of the craft? Adrian Adrian Stott 07956-299966
