A SURPRISING CHANGE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 154, 15 June 1932, Page 10

A SURPRISING CHANGE

AWAKENING OF THE CANALS. INCREASED USE IN BRITAIN. London, May 7. The canal robbed the road of its monopoly of goods transport, then came the railway and the canal slipped into oblivion. The next swing of the pendulum saw the road beginning to get its own back again from the railway. Will history repeat itself, and the canal again prove a serious menace to the road? Mr W. H. Curtis, chairman of the Grand Union Canal Company, thinks it will. Announcing an unusual increase of revenue at the annual meeting of the company in London, he expressed tho view that the history of transport had come round full-circle—back to canal transport. The lesson of their increased revenue at a time of national depression, h e said, was that industry needed low transport costs, and those canals which made efforts to put themselves in order would reap the benefit of providing these economic facilities. “Fo r over a year now,” says the “Morning Post,” “tho company has been hard at work on its great £1,000,000 scheme of modernisation, which includes banks strengthened to withstand the wash of fast motor vessels, deeper water and improved lock facilities. “The reawakening of the canals is one of the least expected romances of modern transport. But a few years ago they seemed to have fallen asleep for ever, delightful drowsy relics of a distant past, summer delight of small, naked boys, witji an occasional slow procession of scarlet and yellow barges cal horse. drawn by a conscientious and method;MOTOR BARGES. “Now up from London river through town and village, over, under and alongside road and railway to the factories of the Midlands there is a new stirring o? life. Motor barges attain almost incredible speeds, and almost daily the canals are coining more and more back on to the map. “One of the biggest changes which this revival will see will be the gradurfl elimination of the floating homes which were once such an integral part of the inland waterways of Britain. “Here and there, of course, they will still be found, and in some few cases the new boats will be built with living quarters, but in tho main the new speeds will tend to obviate the necessity of the barge men living their lives on tho water.

“Another big change, and this one of the main factors in restoring the popularity of tho canals with the consignors of goods, will be the construction of wider barges capable of navigating the Thames.

“In the past the narrow canal craft have been incapable of this feat, while the Thames barges have been too large to enter the canals.

“With the widening and deepening of' the canals a new type of craft is being evolved, which can do the through journey from the port to Birmingham or Leicester without the waste of time and additional cost involved by the co-operation of a river barge and tug.”