America’s oldest transport network needs some attention

ONE of the murals depicting the history of Paducah on a wall built to keep out the river shows a captain in his pilot-house, looking over a 15-barge tow with 24,000 tonnes of cargo. At the turn of the last century this small city in Kentucky, at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee, became a hub of the inland-waterways system and the home of barge and tugboat companies, dry docks and repair shops. Its Centre for Maritime Education still trains river mariners all over the country.