one of the things that fascinates me most about
old transport routes here in the uk is how the engineers of their time overcame problems
just behind me here is the Kennet and canal lock number 58 and beyond lock number 58 in
the distance there is what they call summit pond so summit pond is the highest point on the canal
now there's a piece of engineering which lays just ahead of me i don't know if you can see it
it's steaming now which is interesting just ahead of me is one of those solutions to getting the
water to the summit pond because the kenned canal like so many canals had issues with water levels
are you filming now yep it's wrong
so join me today Paul as we go and have a look
at one of the solutions to one of the biggest engineering problems the canals had
so the purpose of the site is to supply the kenned canal with water so the canal reaches all the way
from bath all the way to ready joining the river kennet and the river avon hence the
kennet and avon canal name and there is a 2.5 flat stretch of canal which is called the summit level
and at that point when the canal was being built there was no fresh water source so
a water source had to be found somewhere and the nearest was here at wilton water
which is a man-made reservoir so the station itself powered by a Lancashire boiler now
but different boilers back in the day pumps water from wilton water all the way up to the
uh launders behind me which then allows the water to flow naturally via gravity
all the way down to the canal and keeping it topped up so the canal boats can pass through
what we're doing is what i'm doing today is preparing the boiler
for the steaming of the weekend so to do that we put a thing called a warming fire in
and that's generally one survival i don't know
so we're not talking fully fledged what you would do tomorrow morning
no this is literally just a warm thing walls are far too gently
so the 1812 baltimore came from Birmingham traveled all the way down we think by a canals
and was installed here once the building was built um through the side of the building they
raised it up that's how we think they did it not by helicopter or taking the whole roof off etc etc
um and then in the 1840s 1846 the cornish harvey and co of hail and cornwall engine arrived at
crofton to help with efficiency due to the opening of the main bristol to london line in swindon
um because it put pressure on the canal and that arrived in 1846 so yes we have two engines now
at the moment when the boilers aren't lit an electrical modern
pump is still needed to keep the canal topped up but what if the electric pump goes wrong
about five years ago when we're not in steam we got electric pumps which uh pumped the water and
they broke down and the canal people came to us and said can you run your engines for us when we
when we repair the problems of each other yeah okay so it's up to your job
so exactly how do you keep this boiler safe how is it maintained yeah the border special comes
in every year yeah we take all what happens others have come off take the trunks off take the walls
down inside take all the fireballs out take them out bubbles off the ball inspectors and then come
in go inside the border do this inspection do an inspector on the outside and then you'll see
then what if anything needs doing yeah hopefully because you've just had all this work done by
materials the board should be good for another 10 years now but of course it's not just the internal
parts they need ongoing maintenance sometimes the external parts need some significant alterations
so in 1959 um the chimney behind me started to lean due to weathering from the west
which is where all of our kind of strong winds come from and nowadays it would be unsafe back
then it wasn't practical and so they cut the top 11 meters off of it but this significantly reduced
the amount of air being able to get to the boilers obviously with fire you need heat oxygen and
fuel as well so it significantly reduced the amount of air getting to the boilers and they
couldn't fire properly so that's unfortunately when the station closed however in 1996 after the
property was bought by the kennet and avon canal trust they rebuilt the top half
of the chimney so it's returned to its 25 meter height
okay so exactly how do you get the water from a deep
well pumped up to the summit of the canal using this station we're
going to get a little bit technical now people so buckle up and pay attention
if you look down you've got a ladder going or you can see a ladder hitting the floor at the bottom
and slightly above those planks you can kind of see a darker shade and that's the water level
so that's the same level there as it is in the canal down on the towpath um the well goes further
than that obviously but in total it's a 40 foot lift from the ceiling or from the floor all the
way to the ceiling um uh the furthest pipe away from you the kind of grey colour that belongs
to pump number one and the bolt number engine and then the pipe in front of you the kind of
uh brown version uh is pump number two um they both pump as i said upstairs one ton per stroke
but there's two different types of pumps originally back way way before so before
uh this engine was installed both of the pumps were exactly the same but then when the cornish
came with the 1846 engine they changed the actual engine itself to what was called a double acting
engine so it had two cylinders within it and that needed a different style pump so hence the
force pump when the engine was rubbish they could never get it to work they changed it back to the
um double acting like single um piston engine and kept the pump the same so that's why we have the
two different types of pumps to the right of you is the condenser tank that belongs to number two
engine so it's basically a big 5 000 gallon bathtub basically each engine has one and this
is where the uh vacuum is created for the engines so we've got hot steam that comes from the engine
from the exhaust so it's been used it's moved the engine downwards it gets put in here it's
injected with a jet of cold water it condenses creating a vacuum behind it which helps to pull
the engine down on the next stroke then you've got hot water what do you do with it we recycle
and put it back in the boiler and helps to keep the steam up so it's like an all closed system
we had an absolutely joyous time here at Crofton so how is it best to enjoy your time here do you
come on a steaming day or a non-steaming day or maybe both i mean a lot of people especially when
i did tours back in the day a lot of people would come on and on steaming learn about the station
through the tour and seeing it all stationary and have the time to learn a little bit more about it
because steaming days or tend to be busier funnily enough and then they learn about a steaming
weekend and then they turn up and they see what they were told in action and then it's also vice
versa people would come on a steaming weekend yeah and then they'd want to because as it's busy
you tend to kind of not um go quickly round but like you don't really take the time as much yeah
that makes sense but yes that was it thank you were you filming me when i
said all of that obviously yeah could you do that one more time