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Soho Mills Wooburn Green


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As last Saturday was our 50th anniversary i have been reminiscing about my time living in High Wycombe from 1967 - 71 and remembered visiting Soho Mills in Wooburn Green for work sometime in (I think) 1971.  The company I worked for at the time (but not for long - but that is another story!) had a metal working/fabrication plant there and I remember seeing quite a bit of old railway lines around the premises in general.  The buildings were being used as a general industrial 'estate' and, as far as I can gather, it still is but quite probably after being modernised and developed.  I've had a look on the Old Maps website and found this for 1938 -

 

https://maps.nls.uk/view/101450062

 

The trackage looks quite extensive and rather 'involved' so I was wondering if there is anything out there that shows the railway in use?  Did it have its own loco(s) or did the GWR/BR work the sidings?  I can't say that I will be building a layout of it but it might be useful for inspiration for someone.

 

BTW, my wife went to the small infant school close by and the place used for Fawlty Towers is half a mile down the road - large house near 'Manse'.

Edited by 5050
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I used to work nearby for a short while in the late 1980s and I recall seeing some inset track on the route past the mill to the pub opposite, though I was more interested in the classic cars being restored there at the time. I'd be interested in learning more now though.

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On 15/07/2020 at 14:32, 5050 said:

Just wondering if this site is mentioned in the relative IRS Handbook?

 

It is. Not a huge amount of detail, but it mentions SG sidings and NG internal tramway. It says that the SG sidings were shunted by horse until 1942, when a road tractor began to be used instead.

 

I've got a half-memory of a write-up about the site in either an NGRS or IRS journal, possibly a visit report from before it closed in 1984.

 

If you look at the 1923 25" map, you can see why it wasn't locomotive worked, in that the SG was configured around three fans of track radiating from wagon turntables. The NG looks to me as if it linked an incoming wood/rags/recycled board store served by the SG with a processing building, so probably carried bales of "whatever" to be fed into a digesting tank.

 

Could raise a query on the IRS forum if you would like.

 

There was also a NG tramway between board mills at Hedsor, Bourne End, apparently, and I remember another at mills (corn, I think) at the back of Tring along an arm of the canal (which doesn't seem to be recorded in the relevant IRS handbook).

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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I took a look at the maps showing the other mills, nearer Bourne End, and there was indeed a tramway linking three of them Princes, Gunpowder/Jacksons, and Hedsor, all of which were part s of Jackson's Millboard. The mills were some distance apart, so the tramway had two long "rural" sections.

 

Having googled around, I can find no clue as to gauge, and the IRS handbook classifies it as "non-loco", so it must have been dobbin's domain.

 

There's a very good aerial photo of the Gunpowder/Jackson's mill, but unfortunately the buildings and trees obscure the course of the tramway.

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49 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I took a look at the maps showing the other mills, nearer Bourne End, and there was indeed a tramway linking three of them Princes, Gunpowder/Jacksons, and Hedsor, all of which were part s of Jackson's Millboard. The mills were some distance apart, so the tramway had two long "rural" sections.

 

Having googled around, I can find no clue as to gauge, and the IRS handbook classifies it as "non-loco", so it must have been dobbin's domain.

 

There's a very good aerial photo of the Gunpowder/Jackson's mill, but unfortunately the buildings and trees obscure the course of the tramway.

I'd noticed that as well and wondered if it was NG.

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