Tug Tyburn

Reader's Letters & Queries: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2017

Another really interesting issue, and I particularly enjoyed the feature ‘Muck and Rubbish’ (Summer 2017, NB). Attached are two images of tug Tyburn, which was one of the rubbish boats operated by St Marylebone Borough Council. Originally named Birmingham, it was built by Abdela & Mitchell at their Queensferry yard on the River Dee in North Wales in 1912 for the Worcester & Birmingham Canal Company. It was fitted with a twocylinder, 50hp Kromhout diesel engine and was used to tow narrowboats through Tardebigge, Shortwood and Kings Norton tunnels. In 1917 it was sold to St Marylebone Borough Council, in whose ownership it was registerered on 30th July 1918. Tyburn was used as part of the council’s wide-boat fleet to tow dumb barges loaded with refuse along the long level of the Regent’s Canal from Paddington Basin to the worked out clay pits at Yeading and Northolt. Tyburn passed to Thomas Clayton (Paddington) Ltd in August 1939, when the company took …