Regency Rails - Georgian, Williamine & Early Victorian Railways

[Nearholmer]

Likewise. I got the kit for Christmas when I was about 10yo, and (a) was still struggling a bit not to gum-up the works of things (Pugs mostly) with that awful "cement" we used to use, and (b) couldn't afford the motorising kit, which was barely stocked anywhere anyway.

[robkitchuk]

On 26/05/2019 at 12:02, Edwardian said:

Well, on Saturday I was wafted up to Heaven on a North-Eastern Early Railway shaped balloon.

 

For those, including me until yesterday, unfamiliar with Beamish, one corner of the plot is devoted to an 1820s landscape with the Pockerley Waggonway. 

 

It's been a fun exercise this morning trying to match the infrastructure to prototype examples.

 

"The Great Shed", opened in 2001, is a wonderful structure, and is said to be based upon Timothy Hackworth's Shildon erecting shop. 

 

 

I entertain doubts upon the subject - even allowing for modifications over time, it is not easy to see how the Erecting Shop at Soho Works could have resembled the Beamish structure, save in the most gerneral sense.

 

copyright - The Durham Record 

 

 

I suspect that we are in the realms of Magnificent Invention, but magnificent it is, and the structure is crying out to be modelled as part of a freelance 1830s-1840s layout.  

 

In fact, I would not be surprised if the two central elliptical arches, and the twin smoke vents, were not inspired by the Stockton & Darlington's engine shed on the bleak moors at Waskerley ....

 

 

Along the line from Waskerley at Parkhead was a stone water column, which is surely the model for that at Beamish.

 

 

 

The Great Shed contains many treasures, including the Forcet Coach (an 1860s Darlington Cttee market day coach, IIRC, latterly used for workmen on the Forcet goods branch, which ran south from the Darlington-Barnard Castle Railway at Gainford; all very familiar territory for Yours Truly) and a fire engine from Streatlam Castle, a lost great house local to me (blown up by the army in 1959).  

 

 

At the passenger platform is a rather steampunky domed iron kiosk.  I'd love to know where that came from.

 

 

 

Further along the line is a signal cabin that could have come straight out of the Forest of Boland LR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Great shed, was intended to be a mix of both structures, with the double archways and vents from waskerley and the general layout of the building based on timothy hackworths erecting shop. This compromise was to increase the capacity of the building. So by creating a four road building rather than one. 

[robkitchuk]

On 26/05/2019 at 16:03, webbcompound said:

hmm. I havn't been around there for a while. Last time I was it was "riding" chaldrons (bad) and a reconstruction of the early S&D coach (good). I'm glad I never saw the coaches you rode in. Far too many diversions from the originals they clearly are originally based on. They look like the sort of thing a Hollywood film of the 30s might have produced for a British based costume drama. With the right colours even these pastiches would have looked a bit better. Blue/green for the second, red and black for the first? Of course it is easy to play the "when I was running things" card, and I think the current  team is probably a vast improvement on some of the people in charge when I was there. That aside, running the tramway, the railway, and the site interpretation team was good fun when I was allowed to get on with it 

The coach livery was based on a Stockton and darlington drawing which has been coloured. The paints were matched from this. 

[runs as required]

Did Shakespeare live into the Railway Age?

This thought occurred to me after reading a book on “Early railways in the Derwent Valley” by Les Turnbull, [Published by the Institute of Mining and Mining Engineers in association with ‘The Land of Oak & Iron” Newcastle upon Tyne 2017]. 

Les Turnbull has a reputation for rooting out invaluable Primary documentation while delving as a Volunteer in the Archives of the Mining Institute in Newcastle, and into other County and National Archives 

 

Here are some (lazy man’s Googled & very secondhand) facts

Shakespeare died in the spring of 1616.  

The “The Stella Grand Lease” wooden waggonway opened in 1633. It transported coals from mines on the Duke of Northumberland’s land at Kyo above Prudhoe in Northumberland along to a staith at Stella on the Tyne to be shipped out very profitably as ‘sea-coal’. 

This is long before the British Canal age begins with Brindley’s canal out of the Duke of Bridgewater’s mine into Manchester opened in 1761. It also precedes the English Civil War !

 

I learnt from Turnbull that 

• Waggonway technology gets transferred from Germany - which is why it struck me that rail engineering must overlap with the Bard’s lifetime.
• The imported technology hits the ground in Durham and Northumberland as edgerails (sometimes with strips of metal on the running edges of the timber rails at places with excessive wear) 
• The rails are spiked down to cross ties of wood 
•  There are turn outs (points?) with sliders for branches and ....
• Diversions into wheel washes where the waggons are hauled through a ford to clean and to lubricate the wooden wheels. 
• Waggonways were ephemeral, changing most frequently at the mining end as new pits opened and old ones closed. Elsewhere they varied as wayleave rents across fields changed. Wood (both oak rails and softwood sleepers) was never wasted and piles of reclaimed kit were stacked at Stella to be bid for to be re-used. 

The documentation is particularly rich because, coal shipping out of the Tyne needed to move upstream beyond the original Roman/Medieval bridge at Newcastle as lower sources for the sea coal trade were exhausted. This necessitated complicated bickering Partnerships to be formed :

Working from the owners of the mining rights downwards were 

 

1.     the landed aristocrats (like the Duke, the Bowes family, even the Crown and the Prince Bishop of Durham) 

2.     the owner(s) of the waggonway

3.     the lessees or owners of the fields over which the waggonway had to negotiate wayleave rents

4.     waggonway maintenance carpenter contractors and waggon operators

5.     staith (timber quay) land owners and keel owners

6.     keelman - stroppy rowers of the boats that could pass under Newcastle bridge to tranship to the sea-going colliers.

 

Litigation was rife between these squabbling partners and also between competing routings, so rich seams of documention survive to be mined by Turnbull.  He reproduces handrawn maps and drawings of waggonway engineering structures, accounts of income and expenditure. 

Plus little vignettes that decorate many of the printed stationery sheets on which the hand written and drawn documentation is recorded show engravings of the chaldron waggons and the arrangements at mines, inclines and staiths .

 

Waggonways were introduced because landowners objected to heavy over laded lumbering coal waggons drawn by oxen destroying the roads and adjoining fields. The lighter chaldron waggons on rails delivered higher tonnages over 24 hours, being easier to control both travelling uphill and down the steep inclines to the staiths.

Some of the waggonways later became today's roads such as the one here:

     

 Main Road, Ryton, a  former waggonway. Just sou'west of the compass rose is a modern pub called the Runhead at the top of a constant descent to Stella. The old Gateshead-Hexham road runs south eastwards below.

The map is marked Durham Assizes bottom left

 

[My education (from schooldays in Derbyshire near Brindley's birthplace at Wormhill) is that Canals preceded railways;  plate ways precede edge rails and the first iron rails are cast by  the Quaker Darby family in Coalbrookdale as a way of storing cast iron and keeping their workers on during a recession.]

dh

Edited August 19, 2019 by runs as required

[Edwardian]

Fascinating, David. Thanks.

 

Not only is it possible, but it sounds as if the 'Railway Age' had some substance in certain parts of the country by the early Seventeenth Century, albeit not Southwark or Warwickshire.

 

Certainly it has a bit more meaning than asserting that David Lloyd George lived into the Space Age, though, strictly, he did: born in 1863, he died in March 1945, a V2 rocket on test in June 1944 having been recorded as reaching space!

[Hroth]

The 16th century German technical textbook "De re metallica" (published 1556) on metals and mining describes the guided tubs that were used in mines in Saxony, so its possible to claim that "the railway age" had its origins well before the birth of Shakespeare!

 

German mining engineers were often employed in mining operations in the North East, so they may well have brought this very useful technology with them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica

 

 

[Nearholmer]

I’m 99% sure that, in “Early Wooden Railways”, M J T Lewis cites a case of German miners/engineers in the English North Country lead mining industry bringing ‘leitnagel hund’ Technology to these isles before 1600 ...... i’m not at home, so can’t consult the well-thumbed volume.

 

There were also very early edge-rail tramways from mines to the River Severn, predating those to the Tyne I think, and a date of 1604 is in my head, but again I can’t check right now.

 

Did Shakespeare see one on his travels? Who knows?!

[webbcompound]

The Germans  were also brought in to start mining in Cumbria in the reign of Elizabeth I.

[Nearholmer]

That’s the case I was thinking of.

 

Really need “Early Wooden Railways” and “Stone Blocks and Iron Rails” to get a proper fix on all this pre-locomotive stuff.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Nearholmer

[Allegheny1600]

For really old pre-railways, see here for the first one;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diolkos

Cheers,

John.

[Ravenser]

3 hours ago, runs as required said:

Did Shakespeare live into the Railway Age?

This thought occurred to me after reading a book on “Early railways in the Derwent Valley” by Les Turnbull, [Published by the Institute of Mining and Mining Engineers in association with ‘The Land of Oak & Iron” Newcastle upon Tyne 2017]. 

Les Turnbull has a reputation for rooting out invaluable Primary documentation while delving as a Volunteer in the Archives of the Mining Institute in Newcastle, and into other County and National Archives 

 

Here are some (lazy man’s Googled & very secondhand) facts

Shakespeare died in the spring of 1616.  

The “The Stella Grand Lease” wooden waggonway opened in 1633. It transported coals from mines on the Duke of Northumberland’s land at Kyo above Prudhoe in Northumberland along to a staith at Stella on the Tyne to be shipped out very profitably as ‘sea-coal’. 

This is long before the British Canal age begins with Brindley’s canal out of the Duke of Bridgewater’s mine into Manchester opened in 1761. It also precedes the English Civil War !

 

I learnt from Turnbull that 

• Waggonway technology gets transferred from Germany - which is why it struck me that rail engineering must overlap with the Bard’s lifetime.
• The imported technology hits the ground in Durham and Northumberland as edgerails (sometimes with strips of metal on the running edges of the timber rails at places with excessive wear) 
• The rails are spiked down to cross ties of wood 
•  There are turn outs (points?) with sliders for branches and ....
• Diversions into wheel washes where the waggons are hauled through a ford to clean and to lubricate the wooden wheels. 
• Waggonways were ephemeral, changing most frequently at the mining end as new pits opened and old ones closed. Elsewhere they varied as wayleave rents across fields changed. Wood (both oak rails and softwood sleepers) was never wasted and piles of reclaimed kit were stacked at Stella to be bid for to be re-used. 

The documentation is particularly rich because, coal shipping out of the Tyne needed to move upstream beyond the original Roman/Medieval bridge at Newcastle as lower sources for the sea coal trade were exhausted. This necessitated complicated bickering Partnerships to be formed :

Working from the owners of the mining rights downwards were 

 

1.     the landed aristocrats (like the Duke, the Bowes family, even the Crown and the Prince Bishop of Durham) 

2.     the owner(s) of the waggonway

3.     the lessees or owners of the fields over which the waggonway had to negotiate wayleave rents

4.     waggonway maintenance carpenter contractors and waggon operators

5.     staith (timber quay) land owners and keel owners

6.     keelman - stroppy rowers of the boats that could pass under Newcastle bridge to tranship to the sea-going colliers.

 

Litigation was rife between these squabbling partners and also between competing routings, so rich seams of documention survive to be mined by Turnbull.  He reproduces handrawn maps and drawings of waggonway engineering structures, accounts of income and expenditure. 

Plus little vignettes that decorate many of the printed stationery sheets on which the hand written and drawn documentation is recorded show engravings of the chaldron waggons and the arrangements at mines, inclines and staiths .

 

Waggonways were introduced because landowners objected to heavy over laded lumbering coal waggons drawn by oxen destroying the roads and adjoining fields. The lighter chaldron waggons on rails delivered higher tonnages over 24 hours, being easier to control both travelling uphill and down the steep inclines to the staiths.

Some of the waggonways later became today's roads such as the one here:

     

 Main Road, Ryton, a  former waggonway. Just sou'west of the compass rose is a modern pub called the Runhead at the top of a constant descent to Stella. The old Gateshead-Hexham road runs south eastwards below.

The map is marked Durham Assizes bottom left

 

[My education (from schooldays in Derbyshire near Brindley's birthplace at Wormhill) is that Canals preceded railways;  plate ways precede edge rails and the first iron rails are cast by  the Quaker Darby family in Coalbrookdale as a way of storing cast iron and keeping their workers on during a recession.]

dh

 

The Wollaton waggonway in Nottinghamshire dated from 1603 and that is well within Shakespeare's lifetime. This seems to be the earliest attested edge-rail railway anywhere in the world.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollaton_Wagonway

 

Bridging the gap to the North East is slightly open - but it seems the mining entrepreneur behind the Wollaton waggonway was also developing mines in the North East a few years later..

 

This http://research.hihistoricengland.org.uk/redirect.aspx?id=6740| Early Railways: Review and Summary of Recent Research  - hope the link works / google "EarlyRailways_ReviewandSummaryofRecentResearch.pdf "- appears to be  up to date scholarship on the subject, and mentions both mine cart equipment from ?c1560 excavated at a mining site in the Peak District, and hints on early 17th (and just possibly late 16th century) waggonways in the Severn Valley in Shropshire    (Section 3). One minor detail - Prof J A Patmore , noted for ingenious compact TT layouts in the 1960s -is referred to as a "railway geographer" 

Quote

 Railway geographers (eg Professor James Henry [Jay] Appleton [1919-2015]) and Professor John Allan Patmore [b 1931]) have noted the impact of railways on the landscape and their influence on the development of railway towns and seaside resorts as well as their profound effects in shaping urban morphology.

 

Shakespeare might have heard of either the Wollaton waggonway, or anything happening in the Ironbridge area, though both are a little too far away to make it probable that he would have....

 

Edited August 19, 2019 by Ravenser
Link to Early Railways document

[Edwardian]

Fascinating stuff. Well, when someone figures a way to make a working model of a horse-drawn waggonway on timber rails, I'll re-title the thread Rail-Roister-Doister: Elizabethan & Jacobean Railways!

[Hroth]

16 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Well, when someone figures a way to make a working model of a horse-drawn waggonway on timber rails, I'll re-title the thread Rail-Roister-Doister: Elizabethan & Jacobean Railways!

Just say "Tudor and Jacobean" and then all bases are covered!

 

Liz Mk1 wasn't on the throne until 1558...

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Just say "Tudor and Jacobean" and then all bases are covered!

 

Liz Mk1 wasn't on the throne until 1558...

 

True, true, though for early steam engines hissing and puffing through jettied half-timbered townscapes, the Ankh-Morpork & Sto Plains Hygienic Railway might be the best subject ... 

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

The Wollaton waggonway in Nottinghamshire dated from 1603 and that is well within Shakespeare's lifetime. This seems to be the earliest attested edge-rail railway anywhere in the world.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wollaton_Wagonway

Bridging the gap to the North East is slightly open - but it seems the mining entrepreneur behind the Wollaton waggonway was also developing mines in the North East a few years later..

This http://research.hihistoricengland.org.uk/redirect.aspx?id=6740| Early Railways: Review and Summary of Recent Research  - hope the link works / google "EarlyRailways_ReviewandSummaryofRecentResearch.pdf "- appears to be  up to date scholarship on the subject, and mentions both mine cart equipment from ?c1560 excavated at a mining site in the Peak District, and hints on early 17th (and just possibly late 16th century) waggonways in the Severn Valley in Shropshire    (Section 3). One minor detail - Prof J A Patmore , noted for ingenious compact TT layouts in the 1960s -is referred to as a "railway geographer" 

Shakespeare might have heard of either the Wollaton waggonway, or anything happening in the Ironbridge area, though both are a little too far away to make it probable that he would have....

Thank you so much for that quick response to my musing. Most interesting.

And thank you for that pdf link too, it downloaded perfectly  (a very threatening looking bit of time wasting!)

 

I note the wiki link mentioned the 1603 waggonway as an overground waggonway (presumably as opposed to being in a copper or coal mine).

But this triggered in my memory having read about a system of underground gas lit carriageway tunnels in east Notts built by an eccentric landowner under his estate in the Dukeries.

Was this real or is  it some fantasy thought up by a novelist ?

I ask because there are also lengthy tunnels on Tyneside such as the Victoria tunnel driven below Newcastle's Town Moor to convey coal chaldrons down to the mouth of the Ouseburn in a manner not to offend the Freemen who (still) defend their open space vigorously against development.

There are also stories about underground tunnels built around Tyneside by rich mining landowners to enable them to drive drive between their estates without encountering hostile Geordies.

We had an eccentric call on us seeking to excavate under our garden. He showed his plan of suspected underground tunnels; it did have the look of a Metro map!

dh

[brack]

31 minutes ago, runs as required said:

But this triggered in my memory having read about a system of underground gas lit carriageway tunnels in east Notts built by an eccentric landowner under his estate in the Dukeries.

Was this real or is  it some fantasy thought up by a novelist ?

The gentleman in question is William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland.

 

But if you just google welbeck tunnels its easier.

Edited August 19, 2019 by brack

[melmoth]

54 minutes ago, runs as required said:

 

But this triggered in my memory having read about a system of underground gas lit carriageway tunnels in east Notts built by an eccentric landowner under his estate in the Dukeries.

Was this real or is  it some fantasy thought up by a novelist ?

 

 

23 minutes ago, brack said:

The gentleman in question is William John Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland.

 

But if you just google welbeck tunnels its easier.

 

He has been used as the basis for a Booker prize shortlisted novel, "The Underground Man" by Mick Jackson (Faber, 1997, isbn 0571236294)

[brianusa]

If  may intercede and ask about a slightly more modern Victorian railway, the Liskeard and Caradon.  It spent most of its years balanced on granite blocks, which lasted even with the GW takeover, instead of the usual wooden sleepers.  My question is, were there any other British railways that used a similar method?

     Brian.

[runs as required]

The use of stone blocks was widespread on early railways - especially those in stone country - notable the Stockton and Darlington of 1825.. They were set at close centres to support the the joints between short fish bellied cast iron rails which could not withstand any bending moment without snapping (compared to wrought iron (or later rolled steel rails).

The ride must have been very rough over joints at about a metre (3ft 6") or so.

 

 

on the left is theremains of stone block supported track on the S&D Brussellton incline in west Duham - at the left is another of George Stephenson's stone block track laid with fish-bellied cast iron rails on the Liverpool & Manchester of 1830. Was the diagonal pattern to afford support to the fish belly rail at its third points?

 

It was discovered later that a flexing  track was far more sympathetic to oscilating steam locos than rigid track (eg Brunel's baulk road) and I believe Gooch reckoned the broad gauge singles were a carriage stronger on flexible track!

dh

Edited August 19, 2019 by runs as required

[Gibbo675]

Hi Folks,

 

I've just discovered this tread which has been a most interesting read from page 1 and thought you all might like to see my Dapol Rocket and Northumbrian kit bash, the coaches are Keyser Matero coaches slightly modified to give the appearance of L&M coaches.

Rocket.

Northumbrian

 

Gibbo.

[Northroader]

There are two places I know of where the blocks are still in place today,

Bixslade Tramway in Forest of Dean

   

Edited August 19, 2019 by Northroader

[Northroader]

And the PenyDarren Tramway at Quakers Yard:    

 

Sorry,in both cases it looks like there’s only one row of blocks, but if you scratch about there is a parallel row here and there.

Edited August 19, 2019 by Northroader

[runs as required]

27 minutes ago, Gibbo675 said:

Hi Folks,

I've just discovered this tread which has been a most interesting read from page 1....

Welcome - you've been a long time coming, the thread is Edwardian's showri

I thought you'd be pleased to learn  that my engraving of the L&M track above is from my much perused copy of "The Working and Management of an English Railway" (or all things Crewe)

dh

[brianusa]

59 minutes ago, runs as required said:

It was discovered later that a flexing  track was far more sympathetic to oscilating steam locos than rigid track (eg Brunel's baulk road) and I believe Gooch reckoned the broad gauge singles were a carriage stronger on flexible track!

dh

 

One can only imagine what it was like with the heavier GW locomotives and rolling stock!

    Brian.

[sir douglas]

blocks still exist on the Silkstone near Barnsley