On 17 Aug, 10:37, BodgeIt wrote:
On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 02:01:11 -0700 (PDT), robgraham

wrote:
This has nothing to do with DIY, but takes advantage of the
encyclopaedic knowledge here !

I've a troublesome knee and have been banned from all physical DIY by
the physio - light exercises and 1 hour's flat walk a day. *That's
where the canal comes in - I'm exploring the local canal (near
Edinburgh) in 1 1/2 mile sections. *The mind as you can well imagine
goes into neutral and the question arose as to how barges crossed in
the old days when there was only one path for the horse and draw
rope? *Anyone know ?

Rob

Rob, as you sorted out my halogen lamp psu this is the least I can
do...

http://www.canaljunction.com/craft/horsedrawn1.htm

Many thanks Bodgelt; that was very interesting as I - and clearly
others - had no idea about the effective size of that element of the
industry. The parallel interestingly enough of the feeding, etc. is
that the navvies who built the canals were equally well looked after.
I don;t know about this country, but seemingly when they were building
the lines across the US central states, the lines were being laid at
the rate of a mile a day. It was about a mile a month for this local
canal, which is around 70yds a day which for manual labour is pretty
fast..

I hope my experience with these lamps doesn't turn out to be a false
dawn! At least the outlay is not significant. You will probably have
to sort out the connections - I opted to get line sockets from
Maplin.

Rob