Those Were The Days

Although I love every minute I spend "leisure boating" on Starcross my initial - and continuing - interest in the canals was the freight. I have no memories of "real" (i.e. pre-1970) carrying on the narrow canals but was fortunate enough to witness some of the last days of widespread commercial carrying on the Yorkshire waterways.
One of the joys of my current project of digitizing my collection of 35mm transparencies has been the uncovering of long-forgotten shots of working barges from the 1970s and 80s. Here are a few.

Cawoods Hargreaves push-tug and coal pans on the Aire and Calder at, I think, Knottingley in 1985

Imagine meeting that lot at a blind bend!

Another Knottingley scene on the same day in 1985

Boats waiting to unload coal at Doncaster Power Station in November 1978

But I didn't spend all my time in the North's grimier towns. Here's a scene in York from August 1980

Barges waiting to unload rolls of newsprint at the riverside presses of the York Evening Press