Victor wonders if this is a lift bridge record
IT WAS way back on the 13th of September that Wood End Lift Bridge on the Peak Forest gave up the ghost and it has taken a month to repair.
This then, we were informed by dear Canal & River Trust(?) needed 'teams and contractors to demobilised the site of works'. Whatever that means.
So the lift bridge was back in action late Friday 14th. Just over a month later, our Keith reports.
We were originally informed that several components were damaged and it was expected that replacement parts would need to be sourced.
After various weekly excuses these 'teams and contractors' managed to source the parts and install them to make the bridge workable once more.
But a month? One wonders—well this one does!—if any of those 'teams and contractors' actually knew what they were doing? But worse! Will the repair last or be like so many other repaired lift and swing bridges that don't?
Springs to mind
Mentioning lift and swing bridges repeatedly failing, the words Cox and Winkwell spring to mind that fail again time after time, vying with each other to get the record!
Of course, though not so many of them, lift bridges too repeatedly fail, through what one can only imagine is poor workmanship, with Wrenbury Lift Bridge on the Llangollen joining the queue with four failures—in July 2020, February, August and September of this year.
Yet the Llangollen Canal was our first cruise in our own boat way back in 1997, and there is no record of the bridge failing in all those years since the failure under CaRT in 2020, then followed by the three more...
In fact during September no less than ten swing/lift bridges failed.
Something is wrong—very wrong.
But what does it mean?
I don't take much notice of towpath closure notices from CaRT as they rarely affect boating, but one stoppage notice concerning the closure of the Regent's Canal towpath has me baffled.
We are told: 'Scaffolding works for restoration at Falcon works, over sail for 10 weeks. Towpath closure, first and last weeks of programme (first week covered by Ragged School Closure)'.