Category Archives: Engineering and construction

Give Tullamore its due

In this post I quoted the Offaly Express report about the Tullamore Dew Heritasge Centre:

As part of a wider redevelopment of the area by Tullamore Town Council, visitors will approach the new Centre along a canal-side boardwalk from which they enter a reclaimed and renovated vintage barge which will house the ticket office and a presentation on the local history of the canal produced in association with Waterways Ireland.

I wondered where the barge would be tied.

It seems that some significant work is to be done, to judge by this Marine Notice from Waterways Ireland:

The Grand Canal

MARINE NOTICE 16/2012

Tullamore Canal Corridor Project – Preliminary Notice

Waterways Ireland wishes to advise masters and owners that planned improvement works in the vicinity of the Tullamore Dew Heritage Centre in Tullamore will require the closure of the canal from 5 November 2012 until 4 March 2013.

Masters and owners are requested to take account of this closure should they have plans to cruise beyond Tullamore during this period.

Incidentally, I’m all in favour of anything that promotes the canal and sells Irish whiskey, but are all new heritage centres going to be marketing devices and shops?

 

Hey, Brendan …

… once you’ve recruited the staff for your new government economic and evaluation service, could you send a few of them round to the DAHG to examine the Clones Canal proposal?

NAMA, DDDA and the Grand Canal Basin graving dock

One of the graving docks

 

Interesting contextual material from Nama Wine Lake here. IWAI Dublin Branch page on the graving docks here.

Waterways power stations

 

Great Island from downstream

According to the Sunday Business Post [paywall], an American venture capitalist firm and a Singaporean company have considered buying the Tarbert (Shannon Estuary) and Great Island (Suir Estuary) power stations from Endesa, which bought them from the ESB. Endesa had intended to invest in its Irish operations, but it was taken over by an Italian company, Enel, in 2009; Enel wrote down the value of the Irish assets and wants to sell them off.

Tarbert from the ferry

 

 

This week’s big shout out …

… [I do hope I’m using the idiom correctly: I gather it’s the latest phrase the young folk use to applaud some worthy person or initiative] for Ian Jack in the Grauniad, for his piece on Huddersfield, where one pushes one’s boat through canals broad and narrow. whereof there is much to be learned (and fine things to be seen) on the Pennine Waterways website.

Stalybridge, mentioned in the article, is where “It’s a long way to Tipperary” was composed and first sung.

Date

Killaloe & Ballina are having one of Waterways Ireland’s Discover Days on Sunday 29 April 2012.

Includes “visitor attractions, water activities, arts and crafts, face painting, live music, a historical walking tour, boat trips and other land and water activities”.

More info as it becomes available.

Long-term serviced moorings at Shannon Harbour

Request submitted to Waterways Ireland:

I would be grateful if you could tell me how many bids you received for these moorings, how many you accepted and what the lowest and highest accepted bids were.

 

 

Alexey Grigoryevich Stakhanov

There has been such interest in my posting on Stakhanovite homoeroticism that I thought I would post a few close-ups of the mural. The light fittings get in the way a bit, but you can pretend that they represent the fires of passion.

 

 

 

 

The chap at the bottom of that last one may represent Diogenes addressing a meeting of the directors of the Royal Canal Company.

 

Internet search engine

Grand Canal docks, Dublin

Salthouse Dock, Liverpool

Lock 3 Skelan, Shannon–Erne Waterway

Maybe they‘ll give me loads of money for this ….

 

Prothero on the Munster Blackwater

The road bridge in Cappoquin

 

The redoubtable F E Prothero, Rear-Commodore of the Cruising Club, wrote just over three pages about the Blackwater, from Kanturk down to the sea, in A New Oarsman’s Guide to the Rivers and Canals of Great Britain and Ireland edited by F E Prothero and W A Clark and published by George Philip and Son, London, in 1896, as a Cruising Club Manual.

Here is a PDF of the relevant pages. I have also put a link to the PDF on my page about the Blackwater, Bride and Lismore Canal.