http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_midlands/7188168.stm Here you go Arch. Borrow a horse and get paid to meander around the countryside.
Can't see it working with 'just in time' logistics -it can take one tourist boat up to three days to navigate a single lock. I can just see the crew of the freight boat behind drumming their fingers on the roof and remarking: "in your own time, dear".
It's a good idea for anything not time sensitive - I think M&S and Tesco use canal haulage for some of their plastic recycling waste. Once you get a supply chain going the individual journey time doesn't really matter. When I lived on a 52' narrowboat, I once did all 21 of the Wolverhampton locks single handed in two hours. Beat that, tourist boats!
Saw this on the One Show a while back, and they showed the 'barges' going up the Manchester Ship canal, or Liverpool, or somewhere. Not a flowery painted tea kettle in sight, I was disappointed, I think all barges, no matter how huge and modern, need a flower painted tea kettle. A good idea, like RT says, for anything that's not in a hurry. Only trouble with using horses would be, clashing with tow path cyclists. There's always going to be one who can;t see why they should slow down for a bridge in case there's half a tonne of heavy horse coming through the other way... Still. I bet the cyclist wold end up in the canal, not the horse... I imagine, once you get it moving, a barge is a fairly efficient thing to keep moving, energy wise?
Oh, yes, I saw it in a book, if you leaned over the rail of a ship and grabbed the rail of a ship parked, sorry, moored next to it, you could pull them together or push them apart...
My Great-Grandfather used to earn his living by hiring out himself and his horse to power/navigate freight barges through Birmingham in the early part of last century. Unfortunately he was infamous in the family for spending a great deal of his earnings in the pubs after a hard days shift, and was, on several occasions placed in police cells for the night to sober up, while his horse was put in the police stables!
Yes, but it's stopping them that's the hard bit. The technique I used for singlehanding locks was to aim the boat at the lock entrance, jump off while it was moving while holding the centre mooring rope and run to the lock gate to try and open it in time for the boat to drift in. Didn't always work, but it was fun when it did! Stopping it once it was in the lock could be tricky though.
