Wizarding Teabags? and muggle inventions

[Brooks R]

No: HPFGUIDX 1512

--- In HPforGrownups at egroups.com, "Vicki Merriman" <vjmerri at i...> 
wrote:

> However, appropos of "not into muggle inventions", they seem to add 
> things after muggles invent them.  After all, they have cameras
that 
> create moving pictures.  But I got the impression in book two that 
> the camera was an ordinary muggle one and it was the way they 
> developed the film that made the difference.  They also couldn't 
have 
> had the Hogwarts Express until the train was invented in the early 
> 1820s.  I wonder how students got to Hogwarts before that?  Flue 
> powder perhaps, if that existed?  Regular horses that were magicked 
> so they never tired?  Flying carpets before the ban?

In the old days a major means of transport around the UK in some
areas 
was canals and towboats, similar to the Erie Canal in the US (and 
several canals in Indiana and Ohio as well.  In southern Indiana
there 
is still a town which maintains a mile or two of its transport canal 
as a tourist attraction).  Areas of the UK without such had to rely
on 
the coach-and-four of Regency Romance fame.  

Horatio Hornblower takes a trip on one of the canal boats with his 
first wife and child, in one of the middle Hornblower books, and I
saw 
an episode on _Mystery_ lately where Inspector Frost was trying to 
solve a century-old murder while on vacation, which was set on such a 
canal tow-boat.

I wonder if there is a disused canal near Hogwarts - perhaps the 
students traveled, in the 18th & 19th centuries, on self-propelled 
canal boats, and the present use of the small boats to cross the lake 
for first years is a tip-o-the-wizards'-hat to that tradition.  I
like 
that idea so much that I think I will include it in my fanfic (where
I 
already have a throw-away line that gives the origin of the current 
steam engine of the Express....)

-Brooks