The Surrey Iron Railway was correctly described by some writers as the first public railway in the vicinity of London, but that qualification seems to have been lost at times...
Going back even further than the Lake Lock Rail Road of 1798, it's possible that the coal tramways in the Charnwood Forest area of Leicestershire - all tangled up with canals - were available for public use (on the payment of tolls, as was the customary practice) from about 1794. Dendy Marshall mentions a Loughborough & Nanpantan Rail Road - another lovely name!
Good Heavens! I had no idea that such a substantial relic still existed - this is indeed part of the Lake Lock Rail Road of 1798...
The gauge was just over one metre, as can clearly be seen. Surely, this surviving remnant could be taken out of the road, and preserved somewhere in its entirety? The report says that the Council was thinking of relocating the track in a nearby field...
There are places you can send off your own details so as to have a figure of yourself made in 4 mm. You're likeness can be in your own model as you operate it.
Brilliant! But not in N gauge, from what I gather. Except I want a kind of Wesley-of-the-North sculpture towering over my layout...
Well, if your layout is N gauge, simply have your figure made to (say) G scale.
I think you probably have to send a photo to the manufacturer, so some dressing-up may be required...
O! the wonders of 3D printing technology! Seriously, a real boon to railway modellers, as it makes the construction of just about anything relatively simple...or so I'm told...
Brilliant! But not in N gauge, from what I gather. Except I want a kind of Wesley-of-the-North sculpture towering over my layout...
ModelU could do this for you. They can 3D you in any costume you like and print you out in whatever scale. They are not excessively cheap, but what they produce is excellent. I am particularly fond of my 7mm scale greyhounds.
Indeed so. But there are details that make you realise this is 2024 rather than 1954 - modern flat-bottomed track and B4 bogies on the coaches come to mind. Nevertheless an amazing achievement!
Indeed so. But there are details that make you realise this is 2024 rather than 1954 - modern flat-bottomed track and B4 bogies on the coaches come to mind. Nevertheless an amazing achievement!
I still have memories of travelling from Hitchin to Aberdeen over jointed track in Mk I carriages on B1 bogies - purgatory. Welded FB rail and the B4 seemed like a gift from Heaven for which I still give thanks. I don't quite fit in with the preservationist crowd... I would be happy to see every last Mk I carriage scrapped and forgotten - I hated them! (I'll concede that the ones that got Commonwealth bogies were tolerable).
The Mk1s are, as enny fule kno, the backbone of the carriage fleet of many a heritage line. For better or worse...
At least the Bluebell Railway has some nice Maunsell coaches in Southern green, though they don't quite match the BR livery of Beachy Head. The blood-and-custard Mk1s look fine with her, of course.
The Mk1s are, as enny fule kno, the backbone of the carriage fleet of many a heritage line. For better or worse...
At least the Bluebell Railway has some nice Maunsell coaches in Southern green, though they don't quite match the BR livery of Beachy Head. The blood-and-custard Mk1s look fine with her, of course.
And, of course, being early in the preservation game, they also have some much older coaches. As does the Isle of Wight Railway, although they also have some which are miracles of rebuilding/restoration.
The Mk1s are, as enny fule kno, the backbone of the carriage fleet of many a heritage line. For better or worse...
At least the Bluebell Railway has some nice Maunsell coaches in Southern green, though they don't quite match the BR livery of Beachy Head. The blood-and-custard Mk1s look fine with her, of course.
And, of course, being early in the preservation game, they also have some much older coaches. As does the Isle of Wight Railway, although they also have some which are miracles of rebuilding/restoration.
Yes. The Kent & East Sussex has a lovely selection of ancient coaches, all beautifully rebuilt and restored - and a load of Mk1s, too, of course!
Not too far from here is the East Kent Railway, another of Colonel Stephens' lines, but it seems to be specialising in BR-era EMU and DMU coaches! The sort of thing the Colonel might have bought, if he were around today, but not really in keeping with the complex and fascinating history of the railway.
That's not a criticism - the EKR is well worth a visit, even if it's only a couple of miles long. It has a spooky Tunnel!
The Mk1s are, as enny fule kno, the backbone of the carriage fleet of many a heritage line. For better or worse...
At least the Bluebell Railway has some nice Maunsell coaches in Southern green, though they don't quite match the BR livery of Beachy Head. The blood-and-custard Mk1s look fine with her, of course.
And, of course, being early in the preservation game, they also have some much older coaches. As does the Isle of Wight Railway, although they also have some which are miracles of rebuilding/restoration.
As an SVR boy (I started volunteering there at 9) I don’t mind the Mk1s (two rakes) but then we’ve also got rakes of LNER teaks, GWR toplights, the LMS set, etc.
If we’re talking restoration miracles then my other line (the Lynton and Barnstaple) has some wonderful stock, beautifully restored from chicken sheds and lean tos.
To be fair (I am not very good at that) the heritage lines don't often put 800 miles or more per day at high speeds on their passenger stock, as the ECML had to do. (I will nominate the HST as my all-time favourite way to travel.)
To be fair (I am not very good at that) the heritage lines don't often put 800 miles or more per day at high speeds on their passenger stock, as the ECML had to do. (I will nominate the HST as my all-time favourite way to travel.)
I'd have agreed with you until a few weeks ago when I went on one of the new electric units (not hybrid) that are running to South Wales. Now I'm not so sure. HST's were more spacious but the new electric units are fast and incredibly smooth, much better than the hybrid ones dumped on us by Failing Grayling - may ill regard for him and his smug complacent face never fade from human memory.
I've heard, by the way, that he may be in line for a life peerage. Lord Smugly Complacent.
I'd have agreed with you until a few weeks ago when I went on one of the new electric units (not hybrid) that are running to South Wales.
Which are these? I only know (and dislike) the hybrids.
Mind you, they have their advantages: a couple of months ago I was on a Class 387 electric when there was a total power failure and we sat for 20 minutes just outside Paddington while hybrids came and went.
Ah! If you want a nice, comfy, homely, electric train, have a ride on one of Mr Maunsell's 2BIL units!
(I think one has been preserved, but I don't know if it - or any other preserved Southern Railway EMU - is allowed out to stretch its wheels, and polish its pick-up shoes, on the main lines).
Just catching up! I may have said before that I was lucky enough to travel on both the Peel and the Ramsey sections, a few weeks before they closed in 1968.
I think I read somewhere that there are proposals to re-open the Douglas to Peel line, but haven't checked this out. I expect some of the trackbed has been built on (particularly in the suburbs of Douglas), or returned to agricultural use, but it would be an exciting development.
Ah! If you want a nice, comfy, homely, electric train, have a ride on one of Mr Maunsell's 2BIL units!
(I think one has been preserved, but I don't know if it - or any other preserved Southern Railway EMU - is allowed out to stretch its wheels, and polish its pick-up shoes, on the main lines).
There is of course the restored/renewed "Brighton Belle" set - it's been "coming soon" for a long time though!
Just catching up! I may have said before that I was lucky enough to travel on both the Peel and the Ramsey sections, a few weeks before they closed in 1968.
I think I read somewhere that there are proposals to re-open the Douglas to Peel line, but haven't checked this out. I expect some of the trackbed has been built on (particularly in the suburbs of Douglas), or returned to agricultural use, but it would be an exciting development.
My father taped the whole series off BBC2 in 1988 for me. I nearly wore the tapes out. Unfortunately it was on Betamax... watching them again when they surfaced on iPlayer was wonderfully nostalgic for the experience of watching them the first time round aged 7-8. Never mind the fact that they were commemorating *20 years* since the end of steam on BR, and everyone was still so young. It occurs to me that if you'd been one of the London Midland's 18 yo firemen in 1968, you'd still only have been 38 when they made this!
The Little Train to Lynton, of about the same time, is also on YouTube and thank God they made it for a video record of so many people with first hand knowledge of a line that closed in the mid 1930s!
Looks good in malachite green, though I remember them in BR green...
Re the IoMR Peel line - I see that a petition was sent to Tynwald back in 2020, asking the Government (railways in the Isle of Man are mostly nationalised) to rebuild the original line of 1870. Much of Peel Station infrastructure is still in existence, being used for other purposes.
I don't think the petition got very far - maybe Tynwald decided (with the pandemic looming) that there were more important matters to deal with?
Re Other Railways - there are quite a few YouTube videos of Spanish narrow-gauge railways (mostly metre-gauge) filmed in the late 60s or early 70s, at a time when many lines were closing down. Some have been modernised, especially along the northern Basque coast, but some were almost on their last legs when filmed:
This is the one and only through train daily between Palanquinos and Medina de Rioseco, on the windswept plains of Castile, north-west of Valladolid. The system closed in 1968...
I lived in Lisbon in 1978/9 and very much regret not travelling on the narrow-gauge lines in the north (one still steam worked). But I was a very serious young man, not given to spending money on such fripperies - and they were a very long way away!
All I ever managed was a ride from Porto (Trindade) to Senhora da Hora: diesel-hauled outbound but in one of the wonderful 1930s Italian carriages, back in a modern and very comfortable DMU.
Visited a railway museum with a friend yesterday - not convenient for many shipmates, but worth noting as an example of how to do it well. It's the Elgin County Railway Museum (https://ecrm.ca/) in St Thomas, Ontario, and notable (to my mind) in being a small collection in an enormous building - a former railway works, so the atmosphere is just right. (There is also a good HO scale model railway there, based on the local scene). What I liked was the fact that you can study the exhibits and remember what you saw - the unique Canadian Pacific Alco RSD17 diesel built by Montreal Locomotive Works, the relatively modern Canadian National 5700 4-6-4, an early electric locomotive and an immaculately restored interurban car from the London and Port Stanley Railway. Many small railway items, too. I found it unusually satisfying.
I think you might be happy here. For example, if you look up the Lake Erie and Northern Railway locomotives, and Early Canadian National Electric Locomotives you will see many that worked into quite recent times. The ancient locomotives from English Electric
were still hard at work into the 1980s. Some of the railways around here never saw a steam locomotive - they went from electric to diesel, which we could see from our back window when we came to southern Ontario. A good selection has been preserved, though some are in rather rough shape.
(I am finding that Google has become much less precise in searching since they applied AI to it).
A more impressive early class was used by the Central London Railway - also a tube line - but these big engines didn't last long, as they were a bit too heavy.
In more recent times, we have the Metropolitan/London Transport Bo-Bos, a couple of which are still in existence, and the rather angular overhead electrics built for the Manchester-Sheffield modernisation - O! so long ago, it seems! The enterprising Southern Railway had its two big electrics (CC1 and CC2), designed by Mr Bulleid and Mr Raworth, with a third (20003) being added by BR, not quite as good-looking (IMHO) as the first two... One of these, in full BR blue, with lots of yellow and white bits, was bulled up annually to haul a short Royal Train to the Derby - the blue loco, and IIRC one or two Pullmans in brown/cream, made a fine sight!
Some of these more recent specimens are /have been available in model form (mostly 00 scale), along with one or two other pioneering main-line prototypes, but other countries (notably Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany) were rather quicker off the mark than the UK. I've seen a video of a preserved Swiss *Crocodile* (a most impressive piece of machinery), which clanks along, sounding rather like a Bulleid Pacific...
Just been watching Severn Valley Railway webcams ... the joy of watching an LMS Crab crossing a GWR Hall at Bewdley, both with appropriate rolling stock - not a BR Mk1 to be seen in either train!
I've never seen a Crocodile in action (more's the pity) but I do remember the Visp-Zermatt "sort of" Crocodiles HGe 4/4 of 1930.
One loco you've missed is the Newcastle Quayside ES1 steeplecab, at present at Shildon.
Just been watching Severn Valley Railway webcams ... the joy of watching an LMS Crab crossing a GWR Hall at Bewdley, both with appropriate rolling stock - not a BR Mk1 to be seen in either train!
I've never seen a Crocodile in action (more's the pity) but I do remember the Visp-Zermatt "sort of" Crocodiles HGe 4/4 of 1930.
One loco you've missed is the Newcastle Quayside ES1 steeplecab, at present at Shildon.
Yes, I'd forgotten about ES1/26500. Now I come to think of it, a rather fine 00 scale model has been produced by a certain Danish firm.
The Crocodiles are truly splendid locomotives - rather like an electric Beyer-Garratt - and there seem to be several preserved in working order. The Rhaetische Bahn has a nice metre-gauge version.
Re Mk1s, I recall a trip one very autumnal (and wet) day on the Severn Valley Railway, when Mrs BF and I were almost the only passengers from Bewdley to Bridgnorth. We travelled in the LMS set, behind an LMS locomotive (can't recall if it was a Black 5 or an 8F), with lots of steam drifting from the engine, and from the steam-heating pipes in the coaches - very atmospheric!
On such a rainy and chilly day, the selection of single malt whiskies available at Bridgnorth Station was most welcome...
Anent the Swiss Crocodiles, if you look at videos of them in motion end-on, it is clear that the coupled wheels are quartered, just as they would be on a steam locomotive, but why? The purpose on a steam loco is well known - to avoid dead centre starting - but why complicate the balancing with an electric where the power is provided by a rotating motor? Perhaps they were built in steam shops that were set up for quartered assembly.
Regarding the London UndergrounD electric locomotives, my paternal grandfather recalled being terrified by the first ones because of the loud noise and arcing as they passed the platform. A bit later on, I remember travelling behind the Metropolitan locomotives that were still commonplace when I was a teenager.
The later (1920s) Met locos were coupled to trainsets which had collector shoes on the outside bogies and a power connection to the loco. That should have diminished the arcing. The Southern "booster" locos used a flywheel to generate electricity to take them across the gaps.
Re the Crocodiles: presumably the quartering was to even out the torque demand on the motors - remember that they used jackshaft drive. I wonder if Class 08 shunters (without jackshafts) have quartered con-rods?
Some of these more recent specimens are /have been available in model form (mostly 00 scale), along with one or two other pioneering main-line prototypes, but other countries (notably Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany) were rather quicker off the mark than the UK. I've seen a video of a preserved Swiss *Crocodile* (a most impressive piece of machinery), which clanks along, sounding rather like a Bulleid Pacific...
I have a memory of travelling behind a Crocodile on the Brig-Visp-Zermatt line, but don't want to swear to that.
The BVZ had locos which looked like Crocodiles but were in fact on bogies. Very impressive though! The BVZ was linked to the Furka-Oberalp but they didn't have any Crocs (the Rhaetian Railway did).
Comments
Going back even further than the Lake Lock Rail Road of 1798, it's possible that the coal tramways in the Charnwood Forest area of Leicestershire - all tangled up with canals - were available for public use (on the payment of tolls, as was the customary practice) from about 1794. Dendy Marshall mentions a Loughborough & Nanpantan Rail Road - another lovely name!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-66108903
The gauge was just over one metre, as can clearly be seen. Surely, this surviving remnant could be taken out of the road, and preserved somewhere in its entirety? The report says that the Council was thinking of relocating the track in a nearby field...
No clue of history. Sadness. - Barbarians, even.
In other news, here's a Michael Portillo figure for your OO gauge display.
Well, if your layout is N gauge, simply have your figure made to (say) G scale.
I think you probably have to send a photo to the manufacturer, so some dressing-up may be required...
O! the wonders of 3D printing technology! Seriously, a real boon to railway modellers, as it makes the construction of just about anything relatively simple...or so I'm told...
ModelU could do this for you. They can 3D you in any costume you like and print you out in whatever scale. They are not excessively cheap, but what they produce is excellent. I am particularly fond of my 7mm scale greyhounds.
I still have memories of travelling from Hitchin to Aberdeen over jointed track in Mk I carriages on B1 bogies - purgatory. Welded FB rail and the B4 seemed like a gift from Heaven for which I still give thanks. I don't quite fit in with the preservationist crowd... I would be happy to see every last Mk I carriage scrapped and forgotten - I hated them! (I'll concede that the ones that got Commonwealth bogies were tolerable).
At least the Bluebell Railway has some nice Maunsell coaches in Southern green, though they don't quite match the BR livery of Beachy Head. The blood-and-custard Mk1s look fine with her, of course.
And, of course, being early in the preservation game, they also have some much older coaches. As does the Isle of Wight Railway, although they also have some which are miracles of rebuilding/restoration.
Yes. The Kent & East Sussex has a lovely selection of ancient coaches, all beautifully rebuilt and restored - and a load of Mk1s, too, of course!
Not too far from here is the East Kent Railway, another of Colonel Stephens' lines, but it seems to be specialising in BR-era EMU and DMU coaches! The sort of thing the Colonel might have bought, if he were around today, but not really in keeping with the complex and fascinating history of the railway.
That's not a criticism - the EKR is well worth a visit, even if it's only a couple of miles long. It has a spooky Tunnel!
As an SVR boy (I started volunteering there at 9) I don’t mind the Mk1s (two rakes) but then we’ve also got rakes of LNER teaks, GWR toplights, the LMS set, etc.
If we’re talking restoration miracles then my other line (the Lynton and Barnstaple) has some wonderful stock, beautifully restored from chicken sheds and lean tos.
I've heard, by the way, that he may be in line for a life peerage. Lord Smugly Complacent.
Mind you, they have their advantages: a couple of months ago I was on a Class 387 electric when there was a total power failure and we sat for 20 minutes just outside Paddington while hybrids came and went.
(I think one has been preserved, but I don't know if it - or any other preserved Southern Railway EMU - is allowed out to stretch its wheels, and polish its pick-up shoes, on the main lines).
Sadly no longer on iPlayer so this is a bit fuzzy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AWSG4I0m5g. Wonderful sequence of two trains racing each other out of St John's!
Better definition here, but ...: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7pv9yp
There is of course the restored/renewed "Brighton Belle" set - it's been "coming soon" for a long time though!
My father taped the whole series off BBC2 in 1988 for me. I nearly wore the tapes out. Unfortunately it was on Betamax... watching them again when they surfaced on iPlayer was wonderfully nostalgic for the experience of watching them the first time round aged 7-8. Never mind the fact that they were commemorating *20 years* since the end of steam on BR, and everyone was still so young. It occurs to me that if you'd been one of the London Midland's 18 yo firemen in 1968, you'd still only have been 38 when they made this!
Tempus fugit.
Looks good in malachite green, though I remember them in BR green...
Re the IoMR Peel line - I see that a petition was sent to Tynwald back in 2020, asking the Government (railways in the Isle of Man are mostly nationalised) to rebuild the original line of 1870. Much of Peel Station infrastructure is still in existence, being used for other purposes.
I don't think the petition got very far - maybe Tynwald decided (with the pandemic looming) that there were more important matters to deal with?
Re Other Railways - there are quite a few YouTube videos of Spanish narrow-gauge railways (mostly metre-gauge) filmed in the late 60s or early 70s, at a time when many lines were closing down. Some have been modernised, especially along the northern Basque coast, but some were almost on their last legs when filmed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id49n7N07-s
This is the one and only through train daily between Palanquinos and Medina de Rioseco, on the windswept plains of Castile, north-west of Valladolid. The system closed in 1968...
All I ever managed was a ride from Porto (Trindade) to Senhora da Hora: diesel-hauled outbound but in one of the wonderful 1930s Italian carriages, back in a modern and very comfortable DMU.
The narrow-gauge lines are all gone except Aveiro-Espinho which, after many years under threat of closure, is slowly being relaid (and has occasional steam excursions): https://www.cp.pt/passageiros/en/how-to-travel/For-leisure/Nature-and-Culture/vouga-steam. (This year it's only running with a 1959-built diesel).
I think you might be happy here. For example, if you look up the Lake Erie and Northern Railway locomotives, and Early Canadian National Electric Locomotives you will see many that worked into quite recent times. The ancient locomotives from English Electric
were still hard at work into the 1980s. Some of the railways around here never saw a steam locomotive - they went from electric to diesel, which we could see from our back window when we came to southern Ontario. A good selection has been preserved, though some are in rather rough shape.
(I am finding that Google has become much less precise in searching since they applied AI to it).
https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/stories/transport/collections-close-city-south-london-railway-electric-locomotive-and
A more impressive early class was used by the Central London Railway - also a tube line - but these big engines didn't last long, as they were a bit too heavy.
In more recent times, we have the Metropolitan/London Transport Bo-Bos, a couple of which are still in existence, and the rather angular overhead electrics built for the Manchester-Sheffield modernisation - O! so long ago, it seems! The enterprising Southern Railway had its two big electrics (CC1 and CC2), designed by Mr Bulleid and Mr Raworth, with a third (20003) being added by BR, not quite as good-looking (IMHO) as the first two... One of these, in full BR blue, with lots of yellow and white bits, was bulled up annually to haul a short Royal Train to the Derby - the blue loco, and IIRC one or two Pullmans in brown/cream, made a fine sight!
Some of these more recent specimens are /have been available in model form (mostly 00 scale), along with one or two other pioneering main-line prototypes, but other countries (notably Switzerland, Italy, Austria, and Germany) were rather quicker off the mark than the UK. I've seen a video of a preserved Swiss *Crocodile* (a most impressive piece of machinery), which clanks along, sounding rather like a Bulleid Pacific...
I've never seen a Crocodile in action (more's the pity) but I do remember the Visp-Zermatt "sort of" Crocodiles HGe 4/4 of 1930.
One loco you've missed is the Newcastle Quayside ES1 steeplecab, at present at Shildon.
Yes, I'd forgotten about ES1/26500. Now I come to think of it, a rather fine 00 scale model has been produced by a certain Danish firm.
The Crocodiles are truly splendid locomotives - rather like an electric Beyer-Garratt - and there seem to be several preserved in working order. The Rhaetische Bahn has a nice metre-gauge version.
Re Mk1s, I recall a trip one very autumnal (and wet) day on the Severn Valley Railway, when Mrs BF and I were almost the only passengers from Bewdley to Bridgnorth. We travelled in the LMS set, behind an LMS locomotive (can't recall if it was a Black 5 or an 8F), with lots of steam drifting from the engine, and from the steam-heating pipes in the coaches - very atmospheric!
On such a rainy and chilly day, the selection of single malt whiskies available at Bridgnorth Station was most welcome...
Regarding the London UndergrounD electric locomotives, my paternal grandfather recalled being terrified by the first ones because of the loud noise and arcing as they passed the platform. A bit later on, I remember travelling behind the Metropolitan locomotives that were still commonplace when I was a teenager.
Re the Crocodiles: presumably the quartering was to even out the torque demand on the motors - remember that they used jackshaft drive. I wonder if Class 08 shunters (without jackshafts) have quartered con-rods?
The Central London opened in 1900, and the first Met electric locos were introduced in 1906...
I have a memory of travelling behind a Crocodile on the Brig-Visp-Zermatt line, but don't want to swear to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhaetian_Railway_Ge_6/6_I
Impressive beasties - remember, they're metre gauge...
The various models available are equally impressive, but do need a fair-sized layout to do them justice!
Very impressive, even in N gauge, and will allegedly go round an 8" radius curve! Pricey, though: https://tinyurl.com/bdfah65p