Some of my Co-Workers at the Boat Museum

Here I am with two of my coworkers.  Jim standing to the left is a retired Civil Engineer and worked for what we would call the Highway Department. Jim and I have been working jointly on some of the building restoration work at the museum.  In the middle is Ronnie who is retired from the Vauxhall factory in Ellsemere port and is in charge of site maintenance at the museum.

The three of us typically work at the museum three days a week. Jim and I were paired up on a number of tasks and projects.  The two of us worked together to repair sills on the engine room and doors on the Steam Accumulator building. Jim has been helpful with familiarizing me with the procedures at the museum which has helped to keep me from getting myself into trouble on a number of occasions.

Centaur returning from a trip

Peter in a black coat and hat is the Captain of the Centaur which is the tour boat that takes visitors for trips on the canal.  Peter was a captain on the world famous Mersey Ferry before he retired and has some interesting stories about his work on the Mersey as a Captain.

Steven being trained by Mike on the Radiant

Steven is another co-worker who I have grown to know and is the youngest on the Maintenance team.  Steven has an enormous amount of energy and pulls more than his share of the work load.  It's encouraging to know that there are actually some young people who are not afraid to work.  Steve among other things is into BMX bikes and from what I have been able to gather pushes his sport to the limits.  He recently destroyed one bike doing his bike stunts. He now uses his sister's bike and I have a feeling her bike is next on the destruction list.

MartYn moving a narrow boat into dry dock

MartYn with the bright yellow coat and black hat is moving one of the narrow boats.  The boat is being moved into position where the lock will be used as a dry dock to allow the boat to be inspected.  The lock the boat is being moved into is frequently used as a dry dock when it is necessary to work on the hull of a boat.  

MartYn and his partner Sue were the first persons I met at the museum.  Martyn and Sue spent an entire morning with me introducing me to the museum by explaining the volunteer program then gave me a tour of the facilities.  Both Sue and MartYn are dedicated to the museum and spend a great deal of their personal time working at the museum.  I cannot recall being at the museum when I did not see one of them working there.  

The Boat Museum hosted a Model Boat Meet this past weekend.  It was amazing to see the detail put into the model boats. Most of the boats were radio controlled so they not only looked realistic they also operated much like the actual full size boats.  There were tug boats that moved tankers into model docks set up on the canal.  Lifeboats raced around and at one point several tugboats simulated moving one of the larger canal boats into dock. It was estimated they had in the order of 1,200 visitors during the two day event.

On Saturday I visited the museum with two of our grandchildren and our son Bernard.  I showed them some of the restoration work I was doing on the buildings at the museum and gave them a short tour.  I arranged a trip on a canal boat for them which traveled on the canal towards Chester.  It was not a very long trip but the they had a chance to see what it was like to travel by boat on the canal and learn a bit of the canal history.


I worked at the museum Sunday morning helping to park cars.  We had well over 500 visitors and by noon had filled three parking lots. 

Boat Museum Project - Accumulator Doors

The main project I worked on this week at the boat museum was to build two doors for the Accumulator Room.  The accumulator is a large vessel that would store the steam from the steam engine that supplied power to the equipment that was operated  when the museum was a working facility.  


Shown below are the original doors that were badly rotten and below that a photograph of the new doors that were built.

This will likely be the last project I see to completion before returning to the states.  Our next project is scheduled to be the repair of windows on the tour boat.  This project will likely extend beyond my return to the states as there are 8 or 10 windows that will need repairing.

Spring In Liverpool

It appears that spring has arrived here in Liverpool as we are seeing many flowers and fruit trees blooming. I noticed the first fruit trees blooming last week on my way to the Boat Museum. I love this time of year and what is especially great is that I get two springs. I get a spring here in Liverpool and when I get back to the States I experience a 2nd spring since the weather in New England is normally about a month behind. I'm not sure about this year as the winter in New England has been milder than normal however England has had milder weather also so it may balance out so I still get a 2nd spring.

A Beatles Celebration

Last evening we attended a Beatles music performance at the Floral Pavilion in New Brighton.  The performance lasted for two hours and was divided into two parts.  The first part was packed with early Beatles music with only four performers.  The 2nd half of the performance focused on later music recorded by the Beatles and the four Beatles were accompanied by a background group consisting of two trumpets, sax, cello, violin and piano.

Karl Lornie as Paul McCartney

Karl Lornie acted the part of Paul McCartney and did a fantastic job of capturing Paul's accent and expressions.

This is a quote from the Floral Pavillion brochure: Undoubtedly the most genuine live recapturing  of the music of The Beatles, this two-hour  theatrically staged concert recreates The  Beatles’ musical journey from 1962 to 1970.  The performance, starring Karl Lornie, includes  original instruments and costume changes to reflect the period of the songs, whilst the show takes the audience right from the early rock ‘n’ roll hits to the later classics such as Let It Be

Day trip to Llandudno Wales

Since our rental car was not due back until Monday we decided to take a short day trip to Llandudno Wales which was an easy day trip for us. Llandudno is a picturesque Victorian seaside resort located on the north coast of Wales about 45 miles west of Liverpool.  It was close to 10 years since we last visited Llandudno but the seaside had not changed much however we did notice that as we got away from the seafront there had been significant changes.  A new shopping center developed with major UK stores like Asda, B&Q and Boots occupying space.

We walked about Llandudno and Joan purchased some linens for one of our grandaughters,  We took a short break for a Cupa before heading back to Liverpool.  On our return to Liverpool we took the coastal road as far as Rhyl.  By the time we reached Rhyl it was getting dark and the temperature dropped to almost freezing so we switched to the A56 which is the primary 4 lane road that took us back toward Liverpool.

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Cambridge England

St John's College

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This week we traveled to Cambridge England to Visit Joan's brother who recently move there to be close to his daughter and recently born grandson.  He actually lives just west of Cambridge in a village called Hardwick where his daughter, grandson and daughter's partner live. His daughter Kathryn who is a primary school teacher also visited us during our stay.

Cambridge is  about 200 miles from Liverpool and the drive to Hardwick was a 4 hour journey. Since Joan's back has troubled her recently we made several stops so she could have a chance to stretch.  

Although we were there for 4 days we only had time to visit Cambridge one day.  On Tuesday we visited with John's family and on Wednesday I helped John with fitting a storage shelf in his entry way.  

Cambridge University made up of 31 colleges and is one of the oldest universities in the world with it's origins going back to the 1200's. Cambridge is on the par with Harvard and MIT in terms of academic standing.  


While touring the city we were able to enter the college grounds to St John's college and found time for Lunch at the Fitzwilliam Museum.  I had my GPS as usual which indicated we walked about 4.5 miles.

Bicycles Everywhere

I was taken back by the number of bicycles in the city.  I do believe that Cambridge has more bicycles per square foot than any other city in England or the United States.  Bikes were everywhere. We passed one of the Cambridge Colleges where I would swear they had 500 bicycles parked. 

Mathematical Bridge

I found the mathematical bridge to be interesting.  Legend has it that the bridge was built without nails or bolts but I later found that was not true.  The original bridge was built with spikes that were hidden and when the bridge was rebuilt years later it was was bolted together.  

We returned to Hardwick by bus rested a bit after our long day in Cambridge then had a gourmet meal at a local pub close to John's home.  We decided to drive to the pub since we were exhausted from our day in the city.  I think John about had a heart attack from the ride because as I entered the roadway from his home I ended up driving on the on the right lane.  I was confused for a moment as it was very dark and there were no cars on the road.  I thought the lane to my left was a bus lane but quickly realized I was driving in the right lane used by oncoming traffic.  I do not think John will ever ride with me again.