Progress around the system, including the Cotswold’s new railway bridge

Progress Lichfield Canal

We spend a lot of time and effort restoring locks, but Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust are putting a lot of work into abolishing one...

Lichfield Canal

Lichfield & Hatherton Canals Restoration Trust volunteers have concentrated their work on the Gallows Reach section of the canal alongside Tamworth Road on the southeast side of Lichfield, where the channel has to be lowered by 2.5 metres to allow the restored canal to pass under Cricket Lane without the need for a humpback bridge (which it would have had originally, but which would not be allowable now). This has involved removing the old lock 24 (and will also involve building a new replacement lock on the other side of Cricket Lane) and building buttresses to support the new north wall. After spending the last two months constructing them, the volunteers have now covered all six buttresses over with soil, so you wouldn’t even know they were there.

An added complication has been the presence of the ‘big pipe’, a storm drain installed in the canal bed before the canal was filled in after it was abandoned in the 1950s. As volunteers started building the north wall in front of the ‘big pipe’ they had to cross over it in order to tie the new wall back into the old lock wall. They started by excavating around the pipe and shaping a couple of quoin blocks to become the leading edge of the angled wall and hence a rubbing strip or an impact strip for passing boats. It has been a slow job building this tied wall as the leading edge has also been shaped with chamfered bricks and the wall has been backfilled with concrete.

The pipe will have to be crossed over again on the wider section of canal bed, which will leave a section of pipe remaining in situ as part of the new wall. It is hoped that providing a parallel water channel will assist boats to traverse this narrow section

View across the head of the former Lock 24: deepened channel in the foreground, six buttresses supporting the old north wall behind have been covered in soil and are not now visible page 18

by providing a path for water displaced in front of the passing boat.

The first of three pipe inspection chambers on the approach to Cricket Lane is also getting closer, and volunteers will have to deconstruct that whilst being careful to maintain both the flow continuity and the containment provided by the pipe. To this end they have created a slit trench on the line of the pipe so that engineering director Peter Buck can explore some of the potential solutions to these issues.

One of the final distinguishing features of old lock 24, the lock wall recess, has been remodelled.

To retain the heritage, blue bricks were used in the new 9 inch wall and the original cross bond (alternate courses of stretcher and header bricks) was maintained. A hundred or so donated modern orange core holed bricks were used in the hidden rear

The new lower channel created through the remains of old Lock 24

stretcher courses which meant that far fewer blue bricks were used.

Meanwhile to the south west of Lichfield, work at Wood Lock 18 continues with a new bridge being constructed and repointing of the lock walls.

Lichfield Canal

Length: 7 miles Locks: 30 Date closed: 1955

Fosseway Heath and Lock 18

Diversions to be built to avoid obstructions to restoration A5127 Railway A38 To Fradley Coventry Canal

HS2?

Huddlesford To Coventry Cappers Lane

Aqueduct To Anglesey Basin M6Toll

Ogley Junction

Wyrley & Essington Canal to Wolverhampton A461 LICHFIELDBypass

A51 Tamworth Road work site

A5

Next part of bypass to be built New channel being built alongside Falkland Road section of bypass Cricket Old Lock 24 to be

Lane replaced by new lock on west side

Gallows Reach of Cricket Lane

work site

The Lichfield Canal is the name given by canal restorers to the abandoned eastern seven miles of the Wyrley & Essington Canal. The canal originally stretched from the Birmingham Canal Navigations Main Line in Wolverhampton to a junction with the Coventry Canal at Huddlesford, but this eastern length which included all 30 of the canal’s locks was closed in the 1950s to save the cost of maintaining the locks.

Progress Derby Canal

Meanwhile the Derby & Sandiacre Canal Trust are indulging in some ‘extreme gardening’ and putting the finishing touches on their restored canal cottages

Derby Canal

DSCT The Derby & Sandiacre Canal Trust’s work on the Derby Canal continues with working parties out carrying out what I refer to as ‘Extreme Gardening’ on various sites in Spondon, Borrowash, Draycott and Sandiacre. As we are now in the autumn this is a mixture of hedge trimming, removal of dead or rotten trees, bramble bashing and the final grass cutting of the season.

We have also been planting hedging saplings with 120 from the Woodland Trust and 950 donated by ‘I dig Trees’ / The Conservation Volunteers / OVO. These have been planted to repair sections of hedging in Spondon and Draycott.

Work at the Canal Cottages in Draycott is almost at an end, with the final work being finished to allow them to be handed to our letting agent to find tenants. The car park is complete and the spaces marked out, and the edges landscaped.

The work to the cafe / meeting rooms are also almost complete, with walls being painted before the electrics are finished and we can start talk to possible tenants, for opening in the spring.

David Savidge Director, Derby & Sandiacre Canal Trust www.derbycanal.org.uk

Martin Ludgate

Progress River Gipping

On the River Gipping in Suffolk, volunteers celebrate the completion of a project to replace a missing bridge, closing a gap in the towpath route

River Gipping

At the site of the long-demolished former bridge which took the towpath across the river between Pipps Ford and Baylham locks, River Gipping Trust volunteers have now completed the 230 year old brick bridge abutment restoration and installed a new wooden platform deck on the abutments.

The footbridge deck was purchased in kit form from the Wooden Bridge Company www.thewoodenbridge.co.uk and assembled by Trust volunteers. The deck consisted of five 10.5m long wooden beams, each 475mm high by 200mm wide weighing around ¾ tonne each.

The footbridge is not yet open to the public. Trust volunteers are now working on an an ‘accessible to all’ towpath leading to and from it. It is scheduled to open this spring (2022) with an official opening soon after.

Trust Volunteers planted over 300 trees along the towpath at the end of 2021, making around 700 trees planted over the last two years, all in open areas that will hopefully in years to come give some shade to the river. The Trust organises a volunteer work party every Wednesday, normally attended by 12 to 18 volunteers. As well as working on the footbridge the Trust are looking to expand their towpath clearance work further upstream towards Stowmarket and further downstream towards Ipswich.

Ian Petchey

RGT

Progress Wendover

Having paused to celebrate the rewatering of a completed length, Wendover Canal Trust are back at work excavating and lining the next section

Grand Union Wendover Arm

In December the Wendover Canal Trust had another successful two-week working period. The main focus of activity was excavation of the canal channel, laying a Bentomat (waterproof bentonite clay matting) lining, and concrete blocks on top of it. The first two pictures show the view in either direction from Bridge 4, showing progress on both sides. On the west side (left), as you can see the section between bridges 4 and 4a has been partially rewatered (the rewatering celebration was pictured on our Pictures by Wendover Canal Trust front cover in issue 310) and is subject to ‘stilling’ trials (see over) to see how well it holds water: fill it up to a known level, close off the supply, and watch the water level to see how fast it drops. The Trust also uses a special dye to spot any possible leaks. Meanwhile on the east side (below left), you can see from the picture how far the lining and blocking has progressed. The next picture (below) is a close-up

of that lining and blocking. It shows the 40 metres of Bentomat, placed on the towpath side of the channel the previous month with the ‘Bentomatic’ (the Trust’s excavatorplus-attachment set up, designed specifically for this purpose), which now has the concrete blocks placed on top of it.

The next picture (top) shows how the reinforced concrete ‘sleeping policemen’ (struts across the canal bed) are cast in concrete to reinforce the canal bank structure. And (above right) the concrete for them is mixed with “some good old-fashioned hard work and a good old-fashioned concrete mixer”.

Finally (right) the Trust’s ‘Tidy Friday’ group is seen planting some 300 tree and hedging plant saplings around the winding hole (turning point) at Little Tring, the current limit of navigation for boats cruising the Wendover Arm from the Grand Union Main Line.

From WCT’s December Report

See over for January update

January update: The highlight of the month has been the start of removing ash from our site. We placed a contract with a large waste disposal company FCC, and this is the first contract of any size that Wendover Canal Trust has negotiated and delivered as a principal contractor to the Canal & River Trust. This material is 100-year-old Tring Urban District Council (UDC) rubbish, mainly ash, which was used to fill in the length of canal immediately beyond the current end of navigation at the winding hole just past the rebuilt Little Tring Bridge. The work this month was largely paid for by Tring Town Council, thank you! 44 lorries took around 870 tonnes of material (which is about 15% of the total amount to go from the tip) to the large FCC waste disposal site at Calvert over a 4 day period. The picture [below] shows a 13 tonne excavator loading ash into one of the lorries. The red on top of the front of the lorry, is a soft retractable top to prevent the ash flying away in transit.

Removing the ash was only the last step in a long hard process. Time has been spent over the past year by the Tip Group, led by Steve Chapman, to find the best quote for the removal of the ash. This was a long process, as several rounds of sampling showed that the ash was not ‘hazardous’ as the initial sampling and testing in previous years had indicated.

We then had to spend the first few days of this work party resurfacing the short access slope “cart-track entrance” from Little Tring Road. This also included the turning area where the lorry is standing, all in preparation for the vehicle movements. The car park also needed a new layer of stone, because it had become muddy for our volunteers and their cars. We bought suitable material, spread it with the excavator, and hired a vibrating rideon-roller to flatten it. Terry Cavender of Bucks Canal Society helped train our volunteers on the roller. Next there was a backlog of clean clay spoil from previous months. Once removed, we started excavating the ash from near the winding hole and storing it at a temporary stockpile ready to load into lorries. We carried out a COSHH (Control Of Substances Hazardous to Health) assessment which concluded that those working with the ash had to wear masks to protect against dust from the ash. Some volunteers also completed online banksman training to maintain site safety. The picture [opposite page] shows ash being dug out. Just visible in the background is a narrow boat ‘winding’ (turning) at the current head of navigation (which we opened in 2005). The ash is about to be loaded into a dumper and taken to the pile for removal. At the end of the working party, all the ash previously piled up at this location near the winding hole had gone, and most of the ash on which that pile was standing has also been dug out. This was our first time using wheeled dumpers with cabs. The cabs were especially welcome on the first Saturday when it poured with rain all day, but since then the weather was unexpectedly dry. The drivers found these dumpers a mixed blessing. While a warm dry cab in January was very welcome, the controls in each of the 2 hired Another 20 tonnes of ash is loaded ready to go to the dIsposal site

Ash being dug out from the infilled length by the limit of navigation (see boat in the distance)

dumpers were different from each other, and different again from our usual Thwaites cabless dumpers. The smaller wheels struggle on our ground, and the eco features of the nearly-new JCB dumper proved troublesome. Nonetheless over a 6 day period, our volunteers moved some 270 loads of ash in the 2 dumpers, that’s about 1 every 10 minutes.

We did this work now, a pilot, because we were keen to prove the feasibility of our plans. A small number of loads were also due to be removed during the February working party. We then need to review any lessons learned, and the availability of sufficient funding, before we continue with more bulk ash removal.

Tony’s Magnificent Decade: Thank you, Tony Bardwell, for your magnificent contribution to the Wendover Canal Trust over the past decade. After more than ten years devotion to the Wendover Canal restoration, culminating in the role of Operations Director, Tony Bardwell has now stepped down for a well-earned rest.

With a welcoming approach, he has encouraged many new volunteers to join our ranks. He also encouraged them to learn new skills to aid our progress, as well as the important health and safety practices essential on site. This was a vital ingredient in ensuring safe working conditions during the current pandemic.

Tony has always been a great innovator. His most recent development has been the ‘Bentomatic’. This has enabled us to lay 40 metres of Bentomat (waterproof bentonite clay matting) canal lining continuously, through an ingenious excavator attachment. In moving to a slightly quieter life, Tony will still be seen on site during our work parties. He’ll be making his knowledge and skills available to others as well as developing who knows what.

We are pleased to welcome team leader Chris Bent, who has stepped up to cover the role of Operations Director. This will initially be until the end of March, when he goes away for three months, and then on his return.

Tony was very successful in finding ways of delegating parts of his role, however we still need to delegate more. So this report has been collated and written by longstanding restoration volunteer (and Deputy Chairman!) Clive Johnson.

Re-watering from Bridge 4a to 4: Stillage tests requested by CRT following rewatering have revealed a so far unexplained water loss between Bridges 4a and 4. We have followed the CRT hydrologist’s recommendation to use biodegradable fluorescent dye to try to trace the water loss, but so far this has revealed no obvious flows and we are not yet any nearer to tracing the cause. Chris Bent is leading a small team of specialists to quantify the loss and investigate further.

Until we trace the cause, we have felt obliged to temporarily pause further relining beyond Bridge 4. This decision had to be taken at short notice, and we’re sorry for any disruption it caused to people’s plans.

Although no relining took place this month, some ‘profiling’ was done (excavation of the canal to the required shape ready for relining) and we covered most of the remaining previously-laid lining with spoil. page 25

Progress Cotswolds

The Cotswold Canals restoration celebrated Christmas and New Year by closing the main railway line to reinstate a canal bridge demolished in 1968

Cotswold Canals

The big news on the Cotswold Canals restoration is that a week-long closure took place over Christmas on the main railway line which crosses the canal at Stonehouse, specifically so that the railway embankment which has blocked the canal there since the demolition of the original bridge in 1968 could be replaced by a new concrete bridge enabling the canal to be opened to navigation.

This is part of the Lottery-supported ‘Cotswold Canals Connected’ scheme (also known in restoration circles as Phase 1b of the Cotswold Canals restoration) which will compete the restoration and reopening of the four miles of the Stroudwater Navigation from the junction with the Gloucester & Sharpness Canal (and the national canal system) at Saul Junction to Stonehouse. There it will join the six-mile Phase 1a length, which reaches through Stroud to Brimscombe Port. Most of the Phase 1a length is already restored, including the locks rebuilt by volunteers (including WRG) at Ham Mill, Griffin Mill and Bowbridge.

The work still to be done on the Phase 1b section includes reinstating the ‘missing mile’ (filled in when the M5 motorway was built) including two new locks and a new crossing under the motorway making use of the existing River Frome bridge; reconstruction of Westfield Lock including building the new Oldbury Aqueduct (likely to be a volunteer job), completion of three part restored locks, construction of new liftbridges and channel works. Target for reopening of the entire ten miles from Saul to Brimscombe is 2025.

On the following pages are a selection of pictures of the work to build the railway bridge.

Above: after the last trains on Christmas Eve had run the line was closed, the tracks were taken up, and the machines spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day ripping out the embankment complete with the two old steel tunnels through it which carried the towpath (just being attacked by the excavator in the picture) and the small flow of water in the canal. Below: once the embankment was out, the base excavated down to below canal bed level and a foundation layer of aggregates laid, the first of the concrete box culvert sections to create the new bridge was craned into place

Above: as more concrete culvert sections are craned into place the bridge starts to take shape. Left: the first of the wing wall sections can then be added. Below: with the structure complete, the remainder of the embankment can be reinstated ready to put the track back - so the first trains can run on New Year’s Day

Progress Bradley Canal

Bradley Canal Restoration Society are back at work clearing the bottom end of the route they plan to restore from the Walsall Canal to Bradley Workshops

Bradley Canal

With the relaxation of Covid restrictions, Bradley Canal Restoration Society’s volunteers have been able to start work clearing the overgrown towpath vegetation and boughs overhanging and obstructing the navigation. The work parties have been well attended and a considerable amount of overgrowth has been cleared from both sides of the ‘in water’ canal from Moorcroft Junction (where the Bradley Canal meets the Walsall Canal) for several hundred yards. So far we have had four work parties and before the start of the nesting season we hope to reach the foot of unfilled lock number 9, the bottom lock. Litter has been picked and logs cut to length and BCRS left for those with log burners to BCRS volunteers clear the length below the bottom lock help themselves.

By Spring we hope to have been given the green light to clear the bottom lock of silt and rubbish. This lock has previously been restored with a HLF Grant and appears intact, requiring only the reinstatement of gates and paddle gear.

The photograph shows BCRS volunteers removing one of the trees. Our work parties continue fortnightly on Saturdays and further details are available on the BCRS website bradleycanal.co.uk and Facebook page.

Length: 2 miles Locks: 8 Date closed: 1954

Bradley CanalWalsall Canal Wednesbury to Walsall Oak Loop to Deepfields Junction and Wolverhampton New bridge Rotten needed Bradley Locks Brunt Line To Tipton (abandoned)

Canal infilled but not obstructed

The Bradley Canal was built as four separate sections Bradley of canal. The first section from Bradley was part lock gate of the winding original route of the Birmingham workshops Canal. It was bypassed when the new BCNTramway Moorcroft Junction Main Line was built, but survived as the Wednesbury Oak Loop until the section beyond the Bradley lock gate workshops at Bradley was abandoned around To Ryders Green 1960. The next section is the and Birmingham Rotten Brunt Line, an earlier shortening of the canal. Branching off this is theLock 9 Bradley Locks Branch, which descended via six locks tointact meet the Bradley Hall Colliery Arm of the Walsall Canal. This descended through three more locksChannel in water, to reach the Walsall Canal at MoorcroftLocks 1-7 buried clearance under way Junction. The locks were abandonedbut believed intact in the 1950s and subsequently filled in. page 29