The Hidden Glasgow Forums

Sharon wrote:canal photography competition

Hmm! Interesting!

Also interesting they have a group for "best picture using a mobile phone".

Icecube wrote:Purplepantman, you'll need to walk a few hundred yards further east [off the 1950 aerial pic] - through the cattle tunnel under the M73 and across the A752 to find the canal.

I think this one would be a winner of any competition. What a great angle.

Its a birds eye from Bing. Thats a Helensburgh to Airdrie train on the line.

From earlier in the thread:

Also at the junction of Castle St and Baird St/ Royston Rd, just a couple of feet into Castle St, you go over a small bridge with the pedestrian walkway underneath. That bridge is, apparently, the original Monklands Canal bridge from a hundred or so years ago.

Yes, that bridge carried the road over the canal. It went out of use in the early
1960's when the Monkland Canal was all but abandoned.

If you walk under that bridge you can see channels worn into the stonework on the corners where the ropes of horse drawn barges have worn it away as they went round the corner.

This is the east side corner, the west side has the same markings, these corner posts are made of metal, not stone:

East side of bridge:


West Side:


View of canal bed, note the formed bank to accommodate the horses:

So this got me going & remembering previous walks at that spot had been pointed and also having got the biggest thrashing ever that I still remember, for going near that canal. I plotted a not terrifically but reasonable trail line of the route on Google Earth using NLS data from the OS 6" 1892-1905 maps

At first by eye but latterly I got fed up with that and started to use overlays roughly put in place for the last Glasgow sections (from about Easterhouse going west)

If anybody want these they are welcome to them, here is a photo of the Glasgow Section



John

id love to see the olde OS maps jock.

are they available online anywhere?

Hi Pingu of course they are NLS web site

Here is a generic link to the mapping site

http://maps.nls.uk/

and here is one directly to what I was using.

http://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=14&lat=55.86409&lon=-4.12336&layers=B000000000FFFFFFFFTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

To track the last piece of the canal I took sections of the map and did a print screen (CTRL + PrtScn) then pasted to Paint and cropped the map. Took that into Google Earth using image overlay then identifying 2 or 3 points anchored and scaled the image via 3 or 4 iterations until it sort of looked roughly right. After that you can fade the image in or out as required

If you want the 2 image overlays (or of James's west end tunnels ones) just let me know and I'll PM them to you

John

I believe Scottish Canals have restored part of the canal not far from port dundas, watersports etc

To my friends in Coatbridge and AIrdrie spoke to an official at Scottish Canals just over a year ago in relation to a Coatbridge related page and they said it wouldnt actually be that hard or expensive too restore the Monkland Canal through coatbridge and Airdire right up to Cuilhill, after that ur talking mega bucks because of the motorway,(apart from where the motorway veers off in the centre of Glasgow) so NOT feasible from there on but ur still talking around half of the original monkland canal!

In fact compared too what they spent restoring the canal between Wester Hayles in Edinburgh right through to Maryhill in Glasgow, they said the cost would be peanuts! (Totally obliterated through wester hayles, motorway built over) cut off from forth and clyde ALL NOW reconnected so why should what is able to be saved of the Monkland Canal being saved?

Would anyone want it? It was filled in because it was a rat infested death trap that everyone was glad to see the back of. Can't see any local support for any reopening

I would wholeheartedly agree with this comment.
I lived in a house on the banks of the canal 1941 to 1960. This house was located above the corporation yard opposite Firpark street.
Barely a week went by without a body being dragged out of it by Ben Parsonage of the Humane Society whether accident, suicide or murder who could tell?

I remember coming home from primary school to find a recently retrieved body stretched out at the side of the house, another time I witnessed a child drowning off the opposite bank- I could do nothing for him- there never were any lifebelts provided although my parents had often suggested this.

Strangely enough, we never did had any rats.

John

I made a wee video about the Monklands canal;



Castle street then and now by David Campbell, on Flickr

Dave