Where these are fitted they should be designed without knobs, knuckles or joins so that ropes can be passed freely over without becoming snagged.
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A properly designed railing seen here beside Red Bull top lock – Trent & Mersey. |
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This railing below a bridge is fairly free of snagging points, but lacking a rope guide. However, the railing itself situated as it is under a bridge, has created a danger for boaters which was not present before. Boaters use bridge holes for access to and from the boat. |
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This railing (left & below) fitted at the tail of Bishops Meadow lock, River Soar is the most badly designed, badly placed, anti boater railing I have seen yet |
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In some instances, newly fitted fencing actually hampers the working of the lock, as shown here at Longford Lock (Staffs & Worcs canal). The problem here is that the beam is too long for the quadrant, not the height of the lock quadrant. Is this fence really necessary? i.e. How many people have fallen off the quadrant in the last 200 years? There is now a danger of a person being trapped between the end of the beam and the fence. The beam is too high to comfortably climb over, and not easy to crawl underneath. |
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While the place where a fence would be of benefit to the boater, there isn’t one. This site is partway down the Farmers Bridge flight on the BCN |
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