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Shropshire Union and Grand Junction Canals > railway

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Philip

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I can recall reading there was once an idea to convert the line of the Shropshire Union Canal south of Calveley into a railway, via a transhipment and junction with the Crewe and Chester railway at Calveley and then using the Chester Canal line to Nantwich and then the whole line of the Birmingham and Liverpool Junction Canal from Nantwich to Autherley in Wolverhampton. Those with good canal knowledge will know the B&LJ was built by Telford in the early days of the railway era and typical railway engineering techniques were used for this route, so conversion to railway wouldn't have been the challenge that it would have been for other canal routes! Would anyone happen to know when these plans were being thought of and would it have provided a potentially quicker route between Chester and Birmingham than the existing rail route does? For the record I am very glad this idea wasn't put into practise!

I also notice the London and Birmingham Railway follows the line of the Grand Junction Canal for much of the way between Long Buckby and Kings Langley, were there any plans at all to convert this section of the Grand Junction Canal to railway, before the existing London and Birmingham Railway was built?
 
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John Webb

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Can't help you re the potential conversion of the Shropshire Union canal.

But I have never seen anything of proposals to convert the Grand Junction canal. The canals at that time were major transport routes and would have strongly resisted any such suggestion, as they were better connected at the time with other parts of the country than these 'new-fangled railways' would have been! The main reason the canal and railway run so close to each other is that the canal had taken the easiest route through the geographical features and the railway followed suit as no doubt it wanted the easiest run as well! But it had the advantage that civil engineering had progressed due to the building of canals - so whereas the GJ swung westwards and went through a short tunnel to join with the Oxford canal at Braunston the L&B Railway could take the more direct line through the bigger and longer tunnel at Kilsby to get to Rugby.
 

edwin_m

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It's just as well that most railways built new alignments rather than converting canals. Even Rocket would have been unable to reach its maximum speed on many ex-canal sections due to the number and tightness of the curves.
 

Doctor Fegg

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A couple of canals were bought by railway companies and their courses partly reused for the trackbed: the Oakham and the Hereford & Gloucester are the two that spring to mind. Plus, of course, Strood Tunnel on the Thames & Medway!

I can’t imagine any notion of converting the Grand Junction taking hold.
 

Mcr Warrior

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It's just as well that most railways built new alignments rather than converting canals.
Wasn't much of the railway line from London Bridge towards Norwood / East Croydon built on the alignment of an old canal?
 

edwin_m

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Wasn't much of the railway line from London Bridge towards Norwood / East Croydon built on the alignment of an old canal?
Approximately but some of the bends were straightened out - I think there's actually a bit of surviving canal somewhere along the route.

There's also the Paisley Canal line that was built on, er, a canal. But that isn't a particularly high speed line and the canal may have been straighter than some in the first place. Here's a bit of the Grand Union on a relatively flat stretch south of Leighton Buzzard - I think it's obvious why the London and Birmingham didn't choose that alignment!

 

John Webb

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Wasn't much of the railway line from London Bridge towards Norwood / East Croydon built on the alignment of an old canal?
This was the Croydon Canal which ran from a junction with the Grand Surrey canal near New Cross and ascended by 26 locks to a basin near Croydon. Insufficient traffic and direct competition from the Surrey Iron Railway running nearby plus the expense of pumping water to the top of the lock flight at Forest Hill, as there was no natural water supply available, made it a relative failure. In the 1830s the London and Croydon Railway Company offered to buy the canal to build the railway and bought it for £42,250. They opened the railway in 1839, with West Croydon Station being built on the site of the canal basin.

A stretch of the canal remains in Betts Park, Anerley, as a water feature. South Norwood Lake remains; this was built as a reservoir for the canal.
(Information from "Lost Canals & Waterways of Britain" by Ronald Russell, published by David and Charles in 1982.)
 
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PeterC

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A couple of canals were bought by railway companies and their courses partly reused for the trackbed: the Oakham and the Hereford & Gloucester are the two that spring to mind. Plus, of course, Strood Tunnel on the Thames & Medway!

I can’t imagine any notion of converting the Grand Junction taking hold.
You beat me to it.

Another London canal to partially vanish under the rails was the Grosvenor.
 

DelW

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I also notice the London and Birmingham Railway follows the line of the Grand Junction Canal for much of the way between Long Buckby and Kings Langley, were there any plans at all to convert this section of the Grand Junction Canal to railway, before the existing London and Birmingham Railway was built?
At the time, the Grand Junction would have been the main commercial artery for goods and coal being carried between the Midlands and London, while long distance railways were still unproven technology.

I think a modern comparison might be a proposal to close the M1 in order to convert it to a hyperloop.
 

Merle Haggard

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At the time, the Grand Junction would have been the main commercial artery for goods and coal being carried between the Midlands and London,

I might be wrong, but my understanding was that the L&B was aiming for the passenger market; didn't one of the managers, when asked about the possibility of carrying coal, say something on the lines of "they'll be asking us to carry dung next!" ?
 

shap summit

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The railway from Aberdeen to Inverness was built on part of a canal as far as Inverure. There are still parts of the old canal still to be seen in Inverurie.
 

Bald Rick

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And of course many of the materials used to build the L&B were transported to site (or very near), by the canal. Turkeys and Christmas.
 

PeterC

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And of course many of the materials used to build the L&B were transported to site (or very near), by the canal. Turkeys and Christmas.
The only time that the Chelsea and Blackwater made a profit on carriage was with materials for the Eastern Counties
 

Lemmy99uk

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Parts of The Carlisle Navigation Canal were filled in to form the track bed for the Port Carlisle Railway branch in 1853.
 

daodao

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The Churnet Valley railway was an early instance of a canal being converted into a railway with closure of the Uttoxeter Canal and it being used as the track bed between Froghall and Uttoxeter.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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I might be wrong, but my understanding was that the L&B was aiming for the passenger market; didn't one of the managers, when asked about the possibility of carrying coal, say something on the lines of "they'll be asking us to carry dung next!" ?
The L&B certainly contracted out freight services to the companies previously engaged in canal and coach cartage.
Firms like Pickfords and Chaplin & Horne provided the services until 1847, when the LNWR (as it was by then) started its own services.
Private firms continued to run their own terminals and collection/delivery services.
Chaplin & Horne also provided the "replacement buses" over the unfinished part of the L&B (Denbigh Hall-Rugby) in 1838.
There was even a faction which wanted railways to be open to all carriers on payment of tolls, as the coach and canal routes were.
 

Merle Haggard

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The L&B certainly contracted out freight services to the companies previously engaged in canal and coach cartage.
Firms like Pickfords and Chaplin & Horne provided the services until 1847, when the LNWR (as it was by then) started its own services.
Private firms continued to run their own terminals and collection/delivery services.
Chaplin & Horne also provided the "replacement buses" over the unfinished part of the L&B (Denbigh Hall-Rugby) in 1838.
There was even a faction which wanted railways to be open to all carriers on payment of tolls, as the coach and canal routes were.

Thank you for that, interesting stuff, and two observations;
The earliest tramways did allow all carriers to use their routes, indeed some had no means of moving the traffic themselves. As well as the in North East there was the Monmouthshire Railway & Canal Company and the Sirhowy Tramway. I think I recall reading that the M.R. & C.C. hit problems when the carriers tries to use steam locos. instead of horses, resulting in serious damage to the rudimentary track.
A curiosity is that freight/goods trains seemed to have been referred to as 'Luggage Trains' for a while; in the excellent Railways Archive accident reports this phrase was used until the later half of the C19.

Presumably the Pickfords <> railway connections were the reason for the former becoming part of the B.T.C..
 
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