How to become a fifteen-minute captain
The life of almost any British city before it was impossible to imagine without river docks. There was an eternal bustle, the steamers and barges were unloaded and loaded, they were also repaired and built. But now all this in the past. For the transport of goods instead of rivers and channels are used mainly railways and automotive tracks. And docks will be empty and destroyed. In their place are building superior business centers and hotels.
Not the only place in the UK, where you can get acquainted with the history of the channels and river shipping and look at the current docks, is the Waterway Museum in Glochester, which is a half hours by train from the British capital.
Paying for an adult ticket 4 pounds (a children’s ticket costs 3, a family, calculated on two adults and two children – 10 pounds), the visitor of the museum learns how the channels and gateways described by Jerome were built. Jerome in his famous story "Three in the boat, not counting the dog", How did they keep in order. Cleaning shipping channels from Tina and Sala in those times was not at all easy. In one of the halls of the museum, a whole brigade of the gloomy wax figures of cartores-cleaners in tarpaulin raids armed with drawers and robbles.
However, the museum is allowed not only to look at the exhibits, but also try them in "business". You can try on an antediluvian bronze diving helmet or pull the steam crane levers, overloaded a hundred years ago, bales with a barge to the warehouse. You can twist the handle of the old winch. Unfortunately, in December, it is impossible to ride on the steam boat of the last century and stand up with the permission of the captain, at his steering wheel. In winter, every movement on the rivers and canals around the Glochester freezes. Navigation closes until April, and the boat now stands in a dry dock.
But for fans of technical antiquities, which burn out of the desire to twist any levers, there is a way out. Any minister of the museum will show the visitor to the place where the steam tug has been installed, having stuck a barravan bargain at the beginning of our century. Such a vessel was controlled by a long tape. Holding for this lever, the visitor at least fifteen minutes may feel like a real captain. Run the steam machine, give a beep and try to spend the vessel with narrow winding canals of the ancient city Glochester.
Of course, the tourist who took the steering wheel to the tow … I don’t have to be afraid to crash into the shore or face another ship. Steam tug is just a layout, and not the whole ship, but only his feed. It was installed in one of the museum halls. On a wide screen, deployed before the visitor, the nose of the tug is projected, the river bed, going towards the barges and passing by the shore. The computer makes it move the nose of the vessel on the screen in accordance with the movement of the control lever.
If new "captain" Make a promach and will roll the steamer going towards meeting, it will turn off the bursting of the burst of the trim, the siren zars and the screen will empty – air bubbles will float on it. That is, "captain" Barge Utopil. Sorry but you can start everything first.
True, as the Museum’s Poorkers say, hold a barge from the channels of the Glochester to the Senvn River (this is the path laid down in the computer program) can only be real captains. Yes, even boys from the nearest elementary school, who are spent on the simulator almost all free time and have already gained high qualifications.
