A Canal Over a Canal.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 40, 2 October 1902, Page 29

A Canal Over a Canal.

Tho most surprising bridge on the Manchester canal (writes a correspondent of an American paper) is one where the Bridgewator Canal crosses tho Manchester ship canal. The Bridgowater canal has for years done a large business between Manchesten and Liverpool.

It was bought by the Manchester company at the time they began the ship canal, and it was then making a profit of something like 100,000 dollars, t| year. It isi. still yin use, and it carries considerable freight. The Line of this canal was right across across tho route necessary to the Manchester ship canal, and at first it seemed as though the construction of the latter woukl necessitate its destruction.

This was objected to, and the engineers solved the problem by making a swinging aqueduct bridge at the cnossing. This bridge can be closed with the water, and even wi^th the txoats in it, and by machinery so moved around to the side that the ships can pass through in the greater canal below.

When they have passed the bridge moves back into place and the water flows on undisturbed. The aqueduct with the water in it. weighs 1400 tons, and is moved as easily as though it weighed less than 141 b. It can bo swung rin a couple of minutes so that the barges of the old canal ane almost unhindered by tho mighty ships of the new.

Thiis Bridgewater canal is only ono of a large number of waterways which distribute freight to all parts of England. We are prone to look upon this as a railroad country. It is a canal country as well. The United Kingdom has altogether 3907 miles of canals, and of these 3500 belong to England and Wales.

More than one-third of the whole nro the property of the railways, the others being managed l^v private corporations. Many of the canals are connected with London, one joins! Liverpool and Birmingham, others tap the country about Leeds, and others are found in the district of Shcfneld. Ireland has about 500 miles of canal, and Scotland 70 miles.

Upon these waterways about 40,000,000 tons of freight are annually carried, at a cost of more than Slo, ooo, ooo. They nro said to pay with horses as their motive power, and it is now proposed to run them by electricity, and '1 understand that some of our American capitalists have been looking into this transformation as a field of profitable investment.