Tag: Dredger

February 24th – I passed the boat yard at Ogley Junction as dusk was falling. I note with some disdain that the dredgers and associated butties and tugs are still languishing here,12months to the day after the blue machine toppled over in Anglesey Basin, it remains abandoned with the other equipment – including a decent tug – brought in to do the job. Behind them, the white and yellow frame of a brand new, unused dredger called ‘Hamster’, left here at least four years ago by British Waterways and never used. Such machinery is extortionately expensive. Just who can afford to purchase it and then let it rust away, unused, to nothing?

Madness. And they wonder why the Canal & River Trust is struggling.

September 1st – I guess it really is coming on to autumn now. I spun out around five o’clock and noticed the sun was already low in the sky. That was really sobering. I slipped up to Chasewater for a quick nose around, and then over to Walsall Wood along the canal. On the way back down the canal, I noted the basin at Ogley Junction was still host to the buttes and stricken dredger that had sunk during operations at Anglesey Basin earlier in the year. Somebody must own this equipment, and it’s been stuck here for months now. I can’t be cheap to buy this stuff, so I’m wondering what the deal is. You can’t just forget about such plant, can you?
Having said that, if you look closely, behind the blue dredger is a white one, just visible. It’s been there, in dry dock, brand new and unused for pushing 3 years now. It’s called ‘Hamster’, and British Waterways – now a charitable trust called the Canal & River Trust – seem to have completely forgotten it exists, too. Mystifying, and it says much about the shambles that is waterway management in the UK. 

May 29th – At Bentley Bridge, in Darlaston, I noticed these workboats pulled in to the bank. Two tugs and a dredger, they seem to be engaged in some heavy canal-cleaning by the looks of the buttes in the distance. This is good to see – these waterways have been kept very clean in recent years, and it’s good to know the spending cuts don’t seem to have affected this vital task yet. Long may it be so.

March 10th – Again, the barriers around the southern dam works were breached at the basin and to the north end of the compound. I see the dredging has started, but the drying lagoon on Chasewater shore has been razed, so no quite sure what’s happening there. The question, however, as to what you do when your dredger is shafted has been answered. Still out of the water at Ogley Basin, the original machine is clearly still crippled, so it would appear a mini-excavator is lifted onto a workboat, and work continues. Odd that a brand new, seemingly little used dredger amusingly called ‘Hamster’ – has been languishing in Ogley Junction for at least two years. If this is a symbol of the way the newly reorganised British Waterways charity works, we’re in for interesting times…

March 4th – I noticed whilst passing Ogley Junction the dredger which had sunk in Chasewater Basin the week before had been hauled out of the water and placed on blocks. All was clearly not well with it. The odd thing is that behind it, with the yellow arm, is a virtually brand new dredger that’s been stationed there for at least two years, without ever seeming to get used. That’s a valuable piece of equipment to be left doing nothing…