Another image from my Anderton Boat at Lift trip. Anyone curious enough to want to know what is going on here may need to see yesterday’s text. Bottom left – a lowered bath, just full of water, no boat. On the right a fully raised bath, level with the canal at the top, with shiny piston underneath which has pushed the bath upwards. The pretty cottage amongst all of the ironwork was the “control room” of the Victorian era, when it took 16 men to operate the lift, what with the coal fed steam engines, valves to be switched, and gates to be operated. Add to that the boatmen, and the men (it would, of course, have been all men) working in adjacent industries and this would have been a busy and seriously noisy, smoky, smelly and filthy location. Nowadays just one man operates the lift from a glass fronted control room 100m away, with the assistance of several CCTV screens and a red button, and it’s a peaceful and clean location. The cargo also tends to be cleaner, provided that it has brushed the off the picnic crumbs as it hands over the boat trip ticket.
Ian