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12 hours ago, DonB said:

May I show my ignorance (again!) ... what is/was "Dartmoor gauge" ?

Since only CKRR has tried to actually answer your question- correctly-  I'll have a go with a bit more detail.

 

Dartmoor gauge was the 4ft 6in gauge originally adopted by the Plymouth and Dartmoor railway that ran from Princetown to Crabtree Wharf near Laira  It was Devon's first iron railway (rail in chairs fixed to granite blocks)  built in 1823 and horse drawn mainly to carry stone from quarries on Dartmoor (including the granite used to build Nelon's Column) It was soon extended to Sutton Pool in Plymouth and boasted Britain's second railway tunnel .

 

Since there were no other railways in the county there was no reason to adopt the Stephenson gauge and when the main line did appear it was Brunel's seven foot variety (at least unil the LSWR turned up)  Most of its route was later taken over by the  GWR for its line to Tavistock and Launceston as far as Yelverton and its branch from Yelverton to Princetown. The new loco hauled line required broader curves so it diverged from the P&D in many places . The P&D's lower section from Sutton to Plympton was was also used by the Lee Moor Tramway which was built for China Clay and descended from Lee Moor by a couple of inclined planes. It was horse drawn at the lower end and up at the quarries and had a level crossing with the GW main line near Plympton but in 1899 bought a couple of small Peckett 0-4-0T saddle tank locos to handle the the increasingly heavy traffic between the two balanced rope hauled inclines. Both have been preserved but their unusual gauge means they have nowhere to run.

The railway was replaced by a pipeline in about 1945 but the lower end remained and its owners maintained their right of way by running a horse drawn sand train across the level crossing several times a year until 1960. This gave the odd siight of a four foot six gauge line crossing the standard gauge.m

 

There was a third separate tramway on Dartmoor that was almost certainly built to the same Dartmoor Gauge. It was for peat extraction and ran from the moors down to Dartmoor Prison which it supplied (probably along with other customers) with peat for  heating and naptha gas for lighting.  

 

I explored some of this while a marine engineering student in Plymouth in the late 1960s and at that time quite a lot of the route of the P.&D.Ry  - in places where the GWR line had diverged- still had the granite blocks in place. I've no idea what's left now.

Edited by Pacific231G
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44 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

And no, this isn't meant to be an attempt at character assassination.

I never thought it was, Kevin, merely good-natured banter.

And a point well made.

 

45 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The glass in my house is too fragile for that to be a good idea.

Well, some people in glass houses not only wear no clothes, but switch the lights on and then ask why everyone is looking at them.

 

49 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

"Spiny" shirley?

I get that, but I think it might be extremely obtuse for most people.

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The above response sums it up pretty well.  At my age I can remember 'action' on the lower section and the incline at Plymbridge still in use  There were a few comments on this subject in this site a while back which pertained to this interesting railway and the last time I was back, it was in the same condition as mentioned.

     Brian

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Edwardians projects are fasciniting and his approach erudite. They are one of the few sources of light in the current darkness. This has been a long year of isolation and it was perhaps stupid of me to imagine that online communities would provide support, however everything has to end and that includes Webbcompound.

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41 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

however everything has to end and that includes Webbcompound


I sincerely hope that there is room for reconsideration in that statement.

 

Not knowing how isolated your isolation is, I can assure you of two things: even those who normally get along splendidly can rub one another up the wrong way given too much time together under the pressured circumstance of “isolation”; and, if company is annoying, the complete absence of it is much worse.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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EM gauge has been a subject that has cropped up in recent postings on this forum, but does anybody else remember EEM gauge?. I recall many years ago reading an article in a model railway magazine from either the late 1950's or early 1960's about a group of railway modellers in 4mm/ft scale, that wished to work to a more exacting standard as far as gauge went, than even EM. The EEM gauge was a reference to 18.8mm gauge. This was before the Protofour Society was formed.

 

As I no longer possess the magazine the article was published in, and google does not appear to be my friend, in regards to providing the relevant information, maybe it is all just a product of my imagination.

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39 minutes ago, rocor said:

EM gauge has been a subject that has cropped up in recent postings on this forum, but does anybody else remember EEM gauge?. I recall many years ago reading an article in a model railway magazine from either the late 1950's or early 1960's about a group of railway modellers in 4mm/ft scale, that wished to work to a more exacting standard as far as gauge went, than even EM. The EEM gauge was a reference to 18.8mm gauge. This was before the Protofour Society was formed.

From Scalefour Soc:

 

In the early 1960's a group of modellers formed, interested in creating more accurate scale models than the then available commercial options. Initially calling themsleves the Model Standards Study Group, they became known as the Model Railway Study Group (MRSG) as they formalised their work. Comprising: J.S. Brook Smith, D.E. Jones, M.S. Cross, W.L. Kidston, B. Morgan and Dr. B. Weller, they acted to create new, more accurate, standards to build models to.

An initial proposal was called EEM, and then the Protofour and related 'Proto' standards were developed. Formalised by the MRSG, these were promoted in a pair of articles in Model Railway News, published in August and September 1966.

A further thirteen part series in Model Railway Constructor started the following year, and became a seminal introduction to their ideas and the Protofour and other Proto standards.

The group went on to form the Protofour Society, founded in 1969.

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Nice picture. I posted some more recent ones some time ago probably 600 or more pages back

 

not quite the moving finger having writ..... but one could lose a whole day searching CA for something.

Future historians will have afield day trawling through it.

Don

 

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9 hours ago, Schooner said:

Forgive me, I can't recall where the canon stands on subject Wells-next-the-Sea. Regardless, here's a rather fine wagon (or three) there in 1895. Sorry about all the clutter.

 

Interesting wagon behind the fisher-folk family - rounded end, but with a flat bit at each side, and dumb buffers. Of the two wagons further round the key, is the one on the right a D299? Or am I imagining the letters M R?

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4 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Interesting wagon behind the fisher-folk family - rounded end, but with a flat bit at each side, and dumb buffers.

 

Yes, I spotted that and thought it almost looked French, although I think it is actually an English-style construction. 

 

Mind you, British builders did turn-out wagons on the French model for export . Somewhere, deep in a cupboard, I have a Majorcan Railways open in 15mm/ft scale that I built years ago. British-built to contemporary French style - the way the framing works is quite different from an English-style wagon, and they used planks at 45 degrees in the sides to add strength. Thinking about it, the style might actually be "Archaic English", dating back to the 1830/40s, and rooted in road cart design, from before the emergence of what we think of a typically English.

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10 hours ago, Schooner said:

Forgive me, I can't recall where the canon stands on subject Wells-next-the-Sea. Regardless, here's a rather fine wagon (or three) there in 1895. Sorry about all the clutter.

wells-the-quay-1895-from-round-the-coast

 

Hopefully of some interest. As per, open in new tab and zoom for full glory :)

 

Ah, the dear old Minstrel, often to be seen at Blakeney quay...

 

 

 

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That is a really interesting wagon, because it is half-way between the "French/Archaic-English" and the "Typical English" in its construction. 

 

The basic story seems to have been of iron components (knees, long washer-plates, corner reinforcements etc) supplanting structural timber, almost certainly allowing a more robust, lighter, and very slightly larger-capacity, wagon.

 

One tends to think of the typical four-wheeled open as bein stuck in the past, but it clearly had an even earlier past before the one it got stuck in.

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6 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

it clearly had an even earlier past before the one it got stuck in.

I've no idea why but that put me in mind of a joke by (I think) Les Dawson:

 

"When we got married I took her for better or worse but she turned out a lot worse than I took her for".

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1 hour ago, Northroader said:

Here’s a drawing, MRN 8/62, in S scale by popular request, so you’ve all got a nice little job to keep you occupied over the Christmas holidays, and not get into any “relationships” - yeuk!

 

Very tempting - though I'd do it as running c. 1902 with help from Basilica Fields. As to relationships, I'm well in and unlikely to be forming any new ones under the present conditions!

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