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Should there be a minor independent standard gauge and SG light railway forum?


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Standard-gauge Light Railway forum-of-sorts Poll  

40 members have voted

  1. 1. Should there be a forum for Standard-gauge Light Railways and similar backwater railways (i.e. modelling; prototype questions; etc.)?

    • Yes
      31
    • No
      6
    • Don't really care either way...
      3


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By the time you've decided whether something qualifies to be in the new subforum by being a light railway but not a Big Four light railway or a quasi-light railway but definitely not a tramway unless it was a tramway which was operated as a de facto light railway, most of your potential contributors will have posted it somewhere else. 

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A fairly simple start is that a railway was subject to the Regulation of Railways Acts, whereas a tramway wasn’t. An “1896 Light Railway” is subject to these Acts, as modified by the LR Act and the BoT Requirements and Recommendations. A pre-1896 Light Railway is slightly different, but it is still unquestionably subject to the RoRA.

 

The term ‘tramway’ is, as you point out, widely encompassing, but the passenger-carrying ones we are concerned with here were (almost all) subject to the 1870 Tramways Act.

 

Sticking just with 1896 LRs and 1870 Tramways, the detail of what each was permitted to do was pinned down by conditions bargained into the particular LRO or Tramway Act by objectors, and by conditions set by the BoT Inspecting Officer, and in the case of tramways by bylaws set by the local authority, so the practical outcome in the two cases could be remarkably similar on first inspection.

 

Then there are the passenger carrying lines that predated all the relevant legislation.

 

The ‘railways are block worked, tramways aren’t’ is a good ready-reckoner way of differentiating.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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7 minutes ago, MrWolf said:

Agreed, but that wasn't quite the point I was making. Many of these minor lines ran trains in such a way that would never have been tolerated on the main lines.

I think it is a pretty brave thing you're doing to try and define a tramway, especially when so many of the original operators couldn't seem to decide either, such as the Selsey Tramway. Did the definition somehow allow them to operate outside of the regular railway rules as did the light railway act?

It seems many had a foot in both camps.

If I think tramway, the first thought is some horse drawn plateway, followed by electric powered mobile Victorian conservatories. ( I actually like them, I would definitely use public transport if we still had those things)

 

The Tramways Act of 1870, brought around stricter regulations on the construction of horse drawn tramways, meaning that the tram company had a 21 year lease of their line, which also involved them having to pay for the upkeep of the entirety public highways that the lines ran over, after the 21 years was over, the local authority had the power to buy out the whole concession (including rolling stock) if its operation was not up to their standards, allowing them operate it themselves.

This act created a legal loophole, which allowed the Rye and Camber Tramway and later the Hundred of Manhood and Selsey Tramway to be constructed without needing gated level crossings and other safety features that were required on "normal" railways. In 1896, the Light Railways Act was passed, superseding the use of the Tramways Act by adding legislation that was provided explicitly for minor standard gauge railways. The Act of Parliament was simpler, easier to obtain than the 1870 act (the act allowed for local authorities were allowed to veto proposals) and lowered the minimum costs to construct such railways. One notable difference between the Tramways Act and Light Railway Act was that; under the Tramways Act, on railways/tramways that ran on roadsides or in the middle of streets, their locomotives were required to have some sort of way of protecting their running gear or wheels. The R&CT went to the bare minimum on their Bagnall 2-4-0s by fixing a plate that simply guarded the valve gear, but nothing else. Other lines like the BA&WH!R, W&UT, GVT all had skirted locos.

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I might be jumping the gun but from the number of posts I think we can safely say that there is sufficient interest for this subject to have its own section. And in addition I think we have set the ground rules for the inclusion to this section.

  1. A lightly built standard gauge railway constructed under either the Tramways or Light Railways Acts.
  2. The railway must carry passengers or passengers and goods not just goods/minerals as this is covered elsewhere in the forum.

Marc

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29 minutes ago, Furness Wagon said:

I might be jumping the gun but from the number of posts I think we can safely say that there is sufficient interest for this subject to have its own section. And in addition I think we have set the ground rules for the inclusion to this section.

  1. A lightly built standard gauge railway constructed under either the Tramways or Light Railways Acts.
  2. The railway must carry passengers or passengers and goods not just goods/minerals as this is covered elsewhere in the forum.

Marc

I would extend rule 1 to include minor independent standard gauge railways (railways that were not operated by big four companies or their larger predecessors (i.e. Lambourn Valley Railway, Railways of the Isle of Wight pre-grouping, Mawddwy Railway etc.)) or railways of sufficient character that was operated by rolling stock non-existent on other parts of their larger operators (Bodmin and Wenford Railway before its connection to the North Cornwall Railway and the Lee-on-the-Solent Railway, both lines were operated by the LSWR, but each maintained their own distinct rolling stock for a long period of their lives. *A notable other example is the Wisbeach and Upwell Tramway as previously mentioned on the thread.

Edited by Hando
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I think that so long as the title of the forum is reasonably explicit, and  "Standard gauge light railway (and backwater) forum?" is, there's no real need to overspecity  what does and does not fit into the category. People can probably decide what fits.

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Agree.

 

My pedantry hasn’t been aimed at the thread title or scope, which IMO should be loose enough to encompass all “lines of character”.

 

But, I do get pedantic (in case that hasn’t become annoyingly apparent!) about conflating different sub-species of “lines of character”, possibly because studying all these arcane legal and other distinctions highlights the rather insane diversity that makes these lines so interesting.


 

 

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Straying away from the complexities of categorisation and what kind of railways should be included in the forum, my next question is how should the forum be structured? MrWolf previously mentioned on page 2 that...

On 18/04/2020 at 10:43, MrWolf said:

I think it would be useful to have a light railways section. If only to bring all of the information together library style.

My idea is that it should be made up of two smaller sections:

  • Modelling
  • Prototype

This would be so as to prevent muddling up of information and make for a useful resource to the Minor Independent Standard Gauge and Light Railway modeller (?MIStaGLiRM?).

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I agree with having this thread, though it will overlap with existing ones. Light railways were not just in England and Wales but internationally and many were narrow gauge, including a proportion of the Colonel Stephens lines.

 

I started a thread on Scottish Light Railways in the Railways of Scotland section in 2015 for example.   There were around 12 in Scotland as well as Private Railways which were not common carriers. Many of the Irish 3ft gauge lines were built as light railways.

 

WJK Davies wrote the classic 'Light Railways' in 1966 and it's still a good definition of the field, at a multi-gauge and international level.

 

Also virtually all preserved railways operate as light railways so the topic is contemporary not just historic.  Though none operate at present for obvious reasons.  

 

Dava

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  • Hando changed the title to Should there be a minor independent standard gauge and SG light railway forum?

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