Lock system Canal locks allow boats to be raised or lowered. They are built where there are drops in the elevation of the river that parallels the canal. The higher the drop in river elevation, the higher a lock must be built to compensate for it. Most locks along the Lehigh and Delaware canals, from Mauch Chunk to Bristol, were relatively lower in height because the rivers elevation lowered gradually. Above Mauch Chunk in the Pocono Mountains of Carbon and Luzerne counties, locks on the Lehigh Canal were of enormous size because of the steep, quick and frequent drops of the Lehigh River. Several of the locks were built to lift or lower boats more than 25 feet. A few of them lifted and lowered boats more than 30 feet. Hundreds of men and mules were required to build the locks, using local rock and timber. On the Lehigh Canal, the gate at the head of the lock (the upstream end) was a heavy single drop gate. At the lower end was a set of two miter gates, which swung in and out. Openings at the bottom of these gates and on the floor of the lock- called wickets- allowed water to enter and leave the lock. Locks on the Lehigh Canal designed by Josiah White were 22 feet wide, big enough to accomodate two canal boats side by side. The original locks on the Delaware Canal were only 11 feet wide, large enough to pass only a single boat. When Josiah White was hired by the state of Pennsylvania to rebuild the Delaware Canal in the early 1830s, he widened some of the locks to 22 feet. When the LC&N gained control of the Delaware Canal in the late 1850s, more of the locks were enlarged.
Really interesting Candy. Thanks for posting. Many of the boats on the LC&N were hinged in the middle. I couldn't find good pictures of them on the Internet, but your book will likely show them. They allowed boats to carry two different commodities or different grades of coal, made turning in basins possible by disconnecting the halves and allowed greater tonnage per trip. In this shot, you can see the gap between the halves where they joined. Pictures of them being unloaded have the emptied end rearing up out of the water, looking like the boat is sinking! Note too the "fried egg" herald on the bow, as later associated with the Lehigh & New England Railroad.
I'm laying out the road bridge. The cardboard canal boat is to scale. I wanted to make sure the bridge pier does not interfere with the towing of the boats.
Not much here you could relate to. The trains came first. The only place I've seen barges is on the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. And in the Milwaukee Harbor. They did come up from Lake Michigan to Lake Winnebago up the Fox River but not anymore and they hid to rise very little. We will enjoy watching your progress. Thanks for sharing.
Really interesting topic! Up-stream and down-stream bound boats would never pass each other in the same lock at the same time, except when entering/exiting the lock, but that would also be only at half capacity. Doubling the width would be easier than doubling the length of the lock (since changing the length also affects the amount of rise/fall). However, doubling the width during the time of mule-pulled boats would only have really improved throughput by avoiding having to wait for all the boats to exit before any could enter the lock. Loading two columns of boats in the lock in the same direction would have required mules in the same direction on both sides of the lock (and canal) which would really foul things up when passing boats in the opposite direction anywhere else on the canal. Unless there was a bridge nearby, by which the mules could be transferred back to the preferred side of the canal for their direction of travel. I suspect they were widened to double the capacity of same-direction traffic for each fill/drain cycle only after canal boats were self-propelled, which would eliminate a choke point for traffic in either direction on the canals. I guess drop gates were simpler to build early on, but not to operate (they had to be lifted, which takes substantially more force than opening a miter gate.) The water level (and therefore water pressure) on either side of a gate is always equal when they are being opened or closed. Perhaps the first gates were drop gates because underwater bearings and such were not yet reliable in early locks. Or maybe miter gates were just invented later? My sister lives a mile or so (as the crow flies) from the old Erie Canal near Schenectady NY. The canal there is just an overgrown, dry ditch. There's a small lock and dam on the Mohawk River nearby (at Lock 8 Park). They took us to see it when we visited them once, several years ago. It was very interesting. The lock is maybe 40' wide or so, but 200' or so long. Interestingly, that same sister once lived in Russellville AR, and there was a lock and dam on the Arkansas River nearby that we also went to see. Much bigger locks, for much bigger boats/barges. I remember seeing a bass boat that was dwarfed alongside the tugs and barges.
Interestingly, when passing in the canal, one boat would heave to the side away from the towpath and drop its tow line to the bottom of the canal. The passing boat could then pull past on the towpath side without its tow line being fouled. I was just thinking that in the pre-railroad days, the region's canals would freeze at the height of anthracite need for residential heating. How critical it must have been to keep the canals in good order to build inventory.
I thought they had towpaths on both sides, one for each direction of travel? I wonder if they ever pulled sleds on the frozen canals?
Towpath only on one side. The canal was drained in winter to prevent damage to the banks. I've been reading
Very interesting and makes good sense. I like how we're all contributing to each other's knowledge on this thread. Not exactly a topic of cocktail conversation, but a whole lot more interesting.
The Delaware & Raritan Canal was built in the early 1830s and its route paralleled the Delaware River through Lambertville, NJ. The PRR's Belvidere-Delaware Branch (aka the Bel-Del) was later laid between the river and the canal here. In May 1983 when I took this picture, the Black River & Western still served Lambertville and used their splendid former PRR doodlebug on the route. The station was built in 1867 and is a restaurant today.
That 1983 photo could easily pass for a 1940s-1950s era shot. Great doodlebug, sitting there like it was waiting for the man on the platform to climb aboard. And that station building is a real mansion! Beautiful.
I've been in New Hope PA across the river from Lambertville (The antiques capital of the east) and Larry and I walked along the canals on both sides of the river.
It's such a neat area isn't it? So much to see and within walking distance. TV's Antiques Roadshow often has Lambertville vendors and the toy expert on the show resides in New Hope. The New Hope & Ivyland RR is on the PA side and hopefully again, the BR&W RR on the NJ side. I see on the BR&W's website that they are restoring the line to Lambertville as funds allow. When I was last there a few years ago, I saw that a local property owner had casually removed the R-O-W across his bit of land. When the line is completed, I hope BR&W enginemen blow the horn to excess each time they pass by his place. I took this Lambertville, NJ photo in July 1976 before the station had been renovated.
Candy, from the pictures I figure your doing this in HO gauge/scale. Is that correct? If you didn't notice in your absence we got into the discussion of putting in our signatures a message of what we are working in. As I have I have a bunch of HO but, do to changes I have been looking more at N for in the apartment and just hanging onto the DCC HO. And trying to learn more of DCC.
Oops? How did he manage to do that? Did they just assume the line was abandoned? (If so, hope they send them a bill for the restoration costs!) Hopefully they have a customer on the line? Or are they just doing tourist trains these days?
I too was surprised to see right-of-way partially erased. I guess the property owner hadn't seen a train in a while, so maybe figured the land was his to clear? My typing skills are too weak to outline the BR&W's interesting history, but when CR abandoned their line into Lambertville in 1977 and interchange there was lost, tourist trains only then used that segment of the BR&W until 1997 when it became too expensive to maintain it. A new interchange with CR was established on the northern end of the railroad, which is/was the money-making freight and tourist train portion. Happily, the BR&W owns two subsidiary railroads today, the Belvidere and Delaware River and the Bound Brook and Raritan River.
So I am a little confused. If the BR&W is restoring the line to Lambertville, there must be some revenue potential?
I can only guess, but plans must be for tourist trains. Unless things have changed, it's not an industrial area. The abandoned portion of the line is only 7 to 8 Miles long and refurbishment is being partially funded by friends of the railroad.
