British Canals: Is their resuscitation practicable?

by Edwin A. Pratt

There is the less reason for incurring such expenditure when we consider the special purposes which the canals of the district already serve, and, I may even say, efficiently serve. The total traffic passing over the Birmingham Canal system amounts to about 8,000,000 tons per annum,[7] and of this a considerable proportion is collected for eventual transport by rail. Every few miles along the canal in the Black Country there is a "railway-basin" put in either by the London and North-Western Railway Company, who have had the privilege of finding the money to keep the canal going since 1874, or by the Great Western or the Midland Railway Companies. Here, again, very considerable expenditure has been incurred by the railway companies in the provision alike of wharves, cranes, sheds, etc., and of branch railways connecting with the main lines of the company concerned. From these railway-basins narrow boats are sent out to works all over the district to collect iron, hardware, tinplates, bricks, tiles, manufactured articles, and general merchandise, and bring them in for loading into the railway trucks alongside. So complete is the network of canals, with their hundreds of small "special" branches, that for many of the local works their only means of communication with the railway is by water, and the consignments are simply conveyed to the railway by canal boat, instead of, as elsewhere, by collecting van or road lorry.

The number of these railway-basins—the cost of which is distinctly substantial—is constantly being increased, for the traffic through them grows almost from day to day.

The Great Western Railway Company, for example, have already several large transhipping basins on the canals of the Black Country. They have one at Wolverhampton, and another at Tipton, only 5 miles away; yet they have now decided to construct still another, about half-way between the two. The matter is thus referred to in the Great Western Railway Magazine for March, 1906:—

"The Directors have approved a scheme for an extensive depôt adjoining the Birmingham Canal at Bilston, the site being advantageously central in the town. It will comprise a canal basin and transfer shed, sidings for over one hundred and twenty waggons, and a loop for made-up trains. A large share of the traffic of the district, mainly raw material and manufactured articles of the iron trade, will doubtless be secured as a result of this important step—the railway and canal mutually serving each other as feeders."

The reader will see from this how the tendency, even on canals that survive, is for the length of haul to become shorter and shorter, so that the receipts of the canal company from tolls may decline even where there is no actual decrease in the weight of the traffic handled.

In the event of State or municipal purchase being resorted to, the expenditure on all these costly basins and the works connected therewith would have to be taken into consideration, equally with the pumping machinery and general improvements, and, also, the purchase of mining rights, already spoken of; but I fail to see what more either Government or County Council control could, in the circumstances, do for the Birmingham system than is being done already. Far more for the purposes of maintenance has been spent on the canal by the London and North-Western Railway Company than had been so spent by the canal company itself; and, although a considerable amount of traffic arising in the district does find its way down to the Mersey, the purpose served by the canal is, and must necessarily be, mainly a local one.

That Birmingham should become a sort of half-way stage on a continuous line of widened canals across country from the Thames to the Mersey is one of the most impracticable of dreams. Even if there were not the question of the prodigious cost that widenings of the Birmingham Canal would involve, there would remain the equally fatal drawback of the elevation of Birmingham and Wolverhampton above sea level. In constructing a broad cross-country canal, linking up the two rivers in question, it would be absolutely necessary to avoid alike Birmingham and the whole of the Black Country. That city and district, therefore, would gain no direct advantage from such a through route. They would have to be content to send down their commodities in the existing small boats to a lower level, and there, in order to reach the Mersey, connect with either the Shropshire Union Canal or the Trent and Mersey. One of these two waterways would certainly have to be selected for a widened through route to the Mersey.

Assume that the former were decided upon, and that, to meet the present-day agitation, the State, or some Trust backed by State or local funds, bought up the Shropshire Union, and resolved upon a substantial widening of this particular waterway, so as to admit of a larger type of boat and the various other improvements now projected. In this case the crux of the situation (apart from Birmingham and Black Country conditions), would be the city of Chester.