Rotherport

 In my previous post about the Sheffield & South Yorkshire Navigation I mentioned that the modernisation project came too late and by the time it was completed the traffic for which it was intended (coal and steel) had vanished.

That wasn't British Waterways' fault. They spent many years campaigning to be allowed the funding to lengthen and mechanise the locks up as far as Rotherham, where they intended to create an inland port to be known as "Rotherport".

I was reminded of this by almost the very next slide I came across after posting. Here it is:

The window sticker is on a car parked in BW's Castleford Offices one day in April 1973. The offices were canalside adjacent the lock and on my previous visit there, several years earlier I had called in to buy a Towpath Permit, to allow me to walk the towpath, for which I was charged 2/6d. (Sadly, I don't seem to have kept it).  Despite the campaign, it was to be another ten years before "Rotherport" came to fruition and it never lived up to its potential.

But Castleford was a good place to see commercial traffic in 1973. Here are a couple more photos taken that day.

This oil tanker had just left Bulholme lock

Tanker "Dunlin C" at Castleford Flood Lock

Allinson's Mill and what looks like a tricky mooring!

"Littlebeck" was well loaded passing the BW offices 
but I don't know what with.  (There's that car again!)