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Common features of Colonel Stephens light railways


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22 hours ago, harry lamb said:

Light weight rail. Probably used on all of the Colonels lines. Much of it flat bottom which was also in industrial use. Krupp of Germany has been mentioned somewhere ( I cannot remember where though!) as supplying such rail to UK prior to WW1. However, a very good example of such light rail in use in a model situation was the Weston Clevedon and Portishead Railway in EM by Andrew Ulyott in MRJ 162 and later mentioned in MRJ 229. I have a small number of books that contain good clear photographs of the Colonels standard gauge railways with the lighter rail of both B/H and F/B sections. In 4mm. code 55 F/B rail is an excellent source for lightweight industrial sidings and such. HL. 

Thanks! I used peco code 60 rail for Weston and c&l code 55 rail for Clevedon. Both sold as 3rd conductor rail. More info on the WC&P here

https://wcpr.org.uk/track-signals.html

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On 27/03/2018 at 08:11, Nick Holliday said:

 I suggest you find a copy of "Railways of Arcadia" by J Scott-Morgan which gives photographic coverage and commentary on all his projects

 

Seconded. It's a delightful book, with those occasional touches of the macabre which so suit the British countryside.

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On 27/03/2018 at 00:16, RateTheFreight said:

I’m looking to build a small O gauge layout based on a fictitious Colonel Stephens style standard gauge light railway. In theory it will be a hybrid of some of his Railways.

 

My question is, did his light Railways share common themes, I.e type of traffic/stock, signalling/operation, general condition, purpose of the line, etc? Did they all have mainline interchanges or links with other transport modes such as canals/rivers?

 

My hope is to create something that would be recognisable as an extension of Colonel Stephens empire without it being a direct copy of one of his Railways.

 

The good Colonel definitely had a few favourite features, which turn up on a number of his lines. With locomotives for example ex LBSC Terriers and ex LSWR "Ilfracombe Goods" turn up a few times. The Terrier is probably a lot easier to source than the Ilfracombe Goods, but the latter was just as widespread. The Colonel must have had good contacts with the Southern because after that another LSWR class, an 0-6-0ST from about the same period as the Ilfracombe was another favourite of his.

 

Manning Wardles ran the Selsey Tramway but they were only occasional motive power elsewhere.

 

The supporting cast of locos are regionally skewed. Second hand ex-SECR O1s were bought for the East Kent but up in Shropshire it was ex-LNWR coal engines that were hired (I think) for the S&M.

 

Primitive railbuses, like the ones based on Ford chassis, were another Stephens feature.

 

Carriage stock was generally what was offered cheap. Again that varies by where in the country the railway was. So the Shropshire and Montgomeryshire had ex-Midland carriages while down in Kent and Sussex ex SECR and ex-LSWR stock was most common.

 

I started building a Stephens like line in 3mm scale. I had a Terrier and an industrial 0-6-0T which was in fact EKR's No.2. I also had a Ford railcar set and was building some ex-LCDR six wheelers. Freight stock was all mainline stuff, Stephens railways own trucks were not permitted onto the mainlines so generally just festered in a siding somewhere

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I don't think any of the railways belonged to the Railway Clearing House, so it would have been difficult to keep track of wagons and account for their use.  I suspect also that maintaining wagons was not a priority so they wouldn't have passed muster with a mainline wagon examiner.  Certainly there are very few photos showing "internal" wagons forming part of trains.

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12 hours ago, Tom Burnham said:

I don't think any of the railways belonged to the Railway Clearing House, so it would have been difficult to keep track of wagons and account for their use.  I suspect also that maintaining wagons was not a priority so they wouldn't have passed muster with a mainline wagon examiner.  Certainly there are very few photos showing "internal" wagons forming part of trains.

 

On a couple of occasions K&ESR stock was hired by film companies on account of it being quaint. Thus No.2 "Northiam" starred as "Gladstone" in the Will Hay comedy Oh Mr Porter. Northiam was allowed by the Southern to run light engine to Basingstoke (filming was on the Basingstoke to Alton line). One of the K&ESR's Terriers was hired to appear in another film that was shot at Lydd. The film company also wanted some K&ESR carriages but the Southern refused them access to their line

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On 02/03/2021 at 09:50, whart57 said:

 

On a couple of occasions K&ESR stock was hired by film companies on account of it being quaint. Thus No.2 "Northiam" starred as "Gladstone" in the Will Hay comedy Oh Mr Porter. Northiam was allowed by the Southern to run light engine to Basingstoke (filming was on the Basingstoke to Alton line). One of the K&ESR's Terriers was hired to appear in another film that was shot at Lydd. The film company also wanted some K&ESR carriages but the Southern refused them access to their line

"The loves of Joanna Godden", based on the novel by Sheila Kaye-Smith.

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I think it’s a comedy-drama, but clearly what constitutes comedy, and likewise drama, have changed over time.

 

Really good railway sequence though.

 

Is the station mistress the real station mistress? Could be, because she was a bit of a local celeb.

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1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

 

 

Is the station mistress the real station mistress? Could be, because she was a bit of a local celeb.

 

She definitely isn't Bessie Jones. Her Welsh pronunciation is abysmal.

 

Edited: It's an actress named Louie Emory: https://www.festipedia.org.uk/wiki/The_Phantom_Light

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On 28/02/2021 at 20:39, whart57 said:

The Colonel must have had good contacts with the Southern because after that another LSWR class, an 0-6-0ST from about the same period as the Ilfracombe was another favourite of his.

Wasn't the K&ESR example obtained from the SR as a swap for Hecate? Hecate was bought for the Maidstone and Headcorn extension, unused as the line wasn't built. 

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I think you are right. Hecate was an 0-8-0T, a bit hefty for a light railway. It apparently got used once a month for Biddenden cattle fair, when the K&ESR had some serious bovine traffic to shift but it was, as you say, swapped for a more useful 0-6-0T from the Southern. Hecate ended up as the Clapham Junction shunter I believe.

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25 minutes ago, Artless Bodger said:

Hecate was bought for the Maidstone and Headcorn extension, unused as the line wasn't built


So it is supposed by many, including me until recently, but the dates don’t seem to hang together at all well, so I now think of it as a ‘maybe’, one other ‘maybe’ being that she was bought with expectation of much more freight on the KESR, and another ‘maybe’ that she was intended for one of The Colonel’s other lines, or maybe she was just a great big mistake.

 

A bit of a mystery, rather than a certainty.

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Hecate was bought in 1904 and the Headcorn extension was opened in 1905. The Light Railway Order for Maidstone line was issued in 1906. These dates do hang together reasonably well.

 

What might be significant though is that Stephens clearly had a business relationship with Hawthorn-Leslie, who built Hecate. The original K&ESR locomotives, the 2-4-0T's Northiam and Tenderden, came from there as did the Plymouth and Devonport's 0-6-2T's which looked very similar to Hecate. It may be that Hawthorn-Leslie were disappointed that Stephens bought second-hand when the K&ESR needed a third engine in 1903 and offered the design of Hecate to him. Stephens was a civil engineer by training, not a mechanical engineer, so we should assume Hawthorn-Leslie did the detailed design to his specifications. It would be interesting to find out whether the six engines Stephens acquired from Hawthorn's were designed by the same Chief Draughtsman.

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I don't think the Headcorn-Maidstone LRO application was made until after 'Hecate' was ordered, although I'd have to go through The London Gazette to find out whether any recent predecessor applications had been made, and clearly surveys where taken well before application.

 

I'm not the only one with doubts. Here is what Neil Rose, said in an article in Tenterden Terrier, reproduced on the Colonel Stephens Society Website:

 

"There remains one enigma about the "Maidstone Extension".  Was KESR locomotive No 4 Hecate really purchased to work this line?  This eight-couple loco had been ordered from Hawthorn, Leslie & Co in February 1904, at a cost of £2,340 and was delivered in April 1905, a month before the opening of the Tenterden-Headcorn line.  The HMJLR was not publicly announced until late 1904.  It seems out of character for H F Stephens to have ordered a locomotive for a line until its necessity was proven, especially for a line as yet unauthorised and with no guarantee that the KESR would work it once built."

 

This article looks at the HL link, and again doesn't give a firm conclusion about the reason for ordering 'Hecate'. 

https://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/locomotive notes topics/hawthorn leslie.html

 

One thing that put doubt in my mind about the "Maidstone Extension" reason usually cited is that when I used to volunteer on the KESR in the 1970s, I saw how hard it was necessary to work an Austerity Tank up the bank from Rolvenden to Tenterden, and Austerities are powerful locos, and that made me think that if the KESR anticipated other than featherweight goods trains over that section, which they probably did in those early days of optimism, they would have been thinking of something with similar capability.

 

Could be that it was a bit of both Tenterden Bank and the Maidstone Line that was in The Colonel's mind, because Tenterden Bank was the effective proof that the horribly steep bit near Chart could be worked with decent loads, which was something a lot of people needed to be convinced of. Having 'Hecate' stroll up the hill with a big train would have been a clincher.

 

All speculation on my part, of course.

 

 

 

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After reading that article I think we need to add Hawthorn-Leslie built locos to the list of "common features".

 

I wonder if the fact that the Hawthorn-Leslie locos were based on standard components means that Stephens treated them like kits. The shortcomings of Hecate, Pyramus and Thisbe suggest the design was not by someone well experienced in designing locomotives

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