Category Archives: Operations

Monasterevan, the Venice of the west

Posted on Thursday 26 March 2009 | Leave a comment

This is a considerably expanded and updated version of an article I wrote years ago, with lots of photos. There are traces of three lost waterways to be seen in Monasterevan (my favoured spelling) and lots of other interesting waterways artefacts as well. There is even an operational puzzle: in the days when boats locked down from the canal to the Barrow, and locked back up on the far side, how were they propelled (and controlled) when crossing the river?

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Posted in Extant waterways, Forgotten navigations, Irish waterways general, Operations

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Dry hurries on Dukart’s Canal

Posted on Wednesday 25 March 2009 | Leave a comment

Dukart’s inclined planes, on the canal from Coalisland to the Drumglass colliery, are known as dry hurries. It may be that the term derives from coal-mining; I’ve published some extracts from Richard Griffin’s 1814 report on the Leinster coalfield.

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Posted in Forgotten navigations, Operations

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Steam on the Grand Canal

Posted on Friday 20 March 2009 | Leave a comment

I have uploaded a report by Sir John MacNeill on experiments with steam boats on the Irish Grand Canal in 1851. The Grand Canal Company evidently asked him to compare two vessels; interestingly, one of them was a twin-screw boat. His recommendations include a change to the use of canal-boats with a beam of 6′ 6″ and the use of turf (peat) as a fuel.

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Posted in Irish waterways general, Operations

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Castle Archdale

Posted on Saturday 7 March 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve uploaded an article about the WW2 flying-boat base at Castle Archdale on Lough Erne, the place from which the Bismarck was spotted after it sank HMS Hood. I’ve included a few recent photos of the flying-boat dock.

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Posted in Irish waterways general, Operations

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The Clodiagh

Posted on Thursday 5 March 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve updated an article I wrote in 2002 about the Clodiagh (a tributary of the Suir) and the Malcolmsons’ nineteenth-century industrial empire. I haven’t updated the section about the changes to the weir because I have no recent information, but I have added a lot of information about the tidal lock, which may be unique in these islands.

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Posted in Forgotten navigations, Irish waterways general, Operations

Killaloe

Posted on Saturday 17 January 2009 | 1 comment

In Portrait of the Grand Canal (Transport Research Association 1969) Gerard D’Arcy gives the information from the depth sheet for the boat 95B, owned by the Barrow Motor Transport Company Ltd and weighed at Killaloe Station, Shannon Navigation, in 1920. Empty, she drew one foot eight and three quarter inches; carrying fifty tons she drew four foot four inches.

But why were Grand Canal boats sent to Killaloe to be weighed and marked? Couldn’t the job have been done on the canal?

I think I know the answer, but perhaps other people have information about it ….

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Posted in Operations

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