Goods. Very Goods.

While searching on the internet for something recently - I think it must have been the Sankey Canal - I came across Mike Smith's fascinating website - Goods & Not So Goods. It's intended for builders of model railway layouts and has much useful information about how railways and canals interacted.

There are one or two surprising nuggets:

A lot of odd materials were shipped by sea, Britain at one time imported large quantities of dried dog droppings from Persia, this material being used for its high urea content in the preparation of leather (removing the hair from hides). These days synthetic Urea is shipped in place of the dog droppings ...

But the best stuff is the clear pictures. I've "borrowed" one here as an example.


... A variation on this approach was used at one coal loading point on the Grand Union Canal, here the wagons used tended to be conventional types and the bottom doors, assisted by man-with-shovel method was used. The railway lines were lower, which might make it an easier proposition to model, for a canal parallel to the track turnplates can be used as shown in the sketch ...