On my way home from work I noticed an unusual barge making it's way slowly up the canal. I make a quick swing by the house to grab my camera bag, and jumped straight back on my bike to catch up with the barge.
Turns out RTE are making a documentary about the Royal Canal, a followup from a series done many years ago about the Grand Canal. Dick Warner presented the original series, and he's doing this one too.
I had a short chat with the skipper and the barge, called Rambler, is about 140 years old, and the only remaining original Royal Canal Barge. Unfortunately it seems the canal isn't quite as deep as it used to be, and the barge is finding it hard work to get up the canal.
Here we see the Rambler very slowly making her way up the straight from Bond Bridge to Jackson's Bridge just outside Maynooth, with regular help from the chap with the 10ft. barge pole.
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The 140 year-old barge Rambler slowly makes it's way down the Royal Canal as a modern Commuter train (made up of a pair of Class 29000 four-car DMUs) speeds by.
When they built their line from Dublin to Galway, the Midland Great Western Railway (MGWR) started by buying the Royal Canal company. The original plan was to drain the canal and run the tracks along it's bottom. Thankfully the MGWR decided they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, and they chose to both build their railway line along the banks of the canal, and to also keep the canal open and in business.
The barge is the last remaining original Royal Canal barge, and was used to carry passengers along the canal, before being used as an inspection boat for most of it's working life. The barge literally took days to travel from Dublin to Mullingar, something the train now does in a little over an hour. To me that really puts into perspective just how much the railways shrank Ireland and the world.
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The 140 year old barge Rambler makes her way up the Royal Canal towards Jackson's Bridge near Maynooth during the production of a TV series about the Canal due out at the end of the year.
Tags: boat canal Royal Canal Maynooth Kildare Ireland
The 140 year old barge Rambler being raised in the 14th lock on the Royal Canal. The barge is travelling the entire length of the canal for a TV series that is due to aired late 2011 or early 2012.
The bridge in the background is Jackson's Bridge.
(Best seen large on black - hit the 'L' key or click on the photo)
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140 year old barge Rambler has a tight squeeze as she leaves the 14th lock at Jacksons Bridge on her continuing journey west to the river Shannon.
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