Narrow gauge gravel/sand/aggregate railways - distance from pit to end of line

[Mol_PMB]

How about the Ship Canal Sand company near Eccles, Manchester.

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW026044

Narrow gauge in the quarry serving a standard gauge siding. There's a loco shed on the narrow gauge so presumably a locomotive.

On the standard gauge they had their own private owner wagons which escaped pooling because they didn't have side doors, and survived into the 1960s. A photo exists.

Also visible a decade earlier in the background of this photo, with an earlier type of loading facility:

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW045128

(note that if you login you can zoom right into the images to see detail, also there are various 'nearby images' showing different views)

Bottom of this map shows the earlier version:

https://maps.nls.uk/view/126522677

 

Edit - A little more info: in the 1950s the narrow gauge loco was Simplex 8959, a 2'6" gauge petrol loco.

The name of the quarry was 'Mount Vernon Quarry' (no mountains near Eccles!)

 

Mol

Edited July 31, 2021 by Mol_PMB

[whart57]

There were quite a lot of gravel pits served by narrow gauge tramways in the Faversham area. This one at Oare is a good example

 

 

It goes to a wharf on Oare creek rather than a railway siding but operation is much as required - straight from pit to transhipment point.

[Fat Controller]

The Gwendraeth Valley Railway (not to be confused with the BP&GVR) ran between a standard railhead at Mynydd-y-Garreg, and a silica brick works on the coast side of Kidwelly station. At the rail-head, narrow-gauge (2'6", I believe) tracks fanned out to a network of quarries working the various outcrops. The narrow-gauge line was steam worked for much of its existence. Much of the track-bed was still easily traceable when I did some surveys in 1973, in connection with an A-Level project. 

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

There were quite a lot of gravel pits served by narrow gauge tramways in the Faversham area. This one at Oare is a good example

 

 

It goes to a wharf on Oare creek rather than a railway siding but operation is much as required - straight from pit to transhipment point.

 

Although a slight difference is that, presumably, extending a standard gauge line into a quarry would be easier than doing this with a waterway.

[Titan]

Gosh, this is the premise for the first exhibition layout I attempted.  Got as far as building baseboards and laying tracks.  Rolling stock consisted of eight minitrix side tipping hoppers, an Atlas diesel, and a white metal Large Quarry Hunslet on an Ibertran chassis.  I had the minitrix unloading ramp so you could actually tip the hoppers into the standard gauge wagons below.  I sold it on and wondered if anything ever became of it...

[whart57]

8 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Although a slight difference is that, presumably, extending a standard gauge line into a quarry would be easier than doing this with a waterway.

 

Would a standard gauge line follow the excavations like this narrow gauge line clearly does?

[Nearholmer]

The ironstone industry used SG at some sites, notably in Oxfordshire, and were quite happy to shift track to follow the work face, and the same sort of thing was done when undertaking major "dirt shifting" civil engineering jobs, so, yes, SG could and did follow the excavations in some cases.

 

This set of photos is interesting because it shows the "before, during, and after" of ironstone extraction using SG railway 

http://www.deddingtonhistory.uk/photos,filmsandillustrations/ironstone/ironstonepics  That whole area is now in the "after" phase, and unless you know what you are looking for it is easy to miss the fact that it was heavily quarried c50 years ago.

 

There are some pictures here of the Corby area that show SG "movable flexitrack" https://www.rocks-by-rail.org/2020/05/04/corby-ironstone-quarry-memories-overburden-stripping-shovels/  

 

Thinking about it, another industry that did this with SG at some sites was chalk extraction for cement-making, Great Barrington near Cambridge was a late survivor, and I visited Tunnel Cement at Tring in the mid/late 1980s, although both IIRC had given-up rail to the face by then, and were using it only to/from main-line exchange sidings. My photos are here ......... somewhere!

 

Are you sure "yours" is a NG line? Kent had all sorts of gauges in industrial use, of course, so without particular knowledge I wouldnt want to guess exactly what it was.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Nearholmer

[009 micro modeller]

10 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Are you sure "yours" is a NG line? Kent had all sorts of gauges in industrial use, of course, so without particular knowledge I wouldnt want to guess exactly what it was. 

 

Wasn’t Oare 2ft?

[whart57]

4 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The ironstone industry used SG at some sites, notably in Oxfordshire, and were quite happy to shift track to follow the work face, and the same sort of thing was done when undertaking major "dirt shifting" civil engineering jobs, so, yes, SG could and did follow the excavations in some cases.

 

Are you sure this is a NG line? Kent had all sorts of gauges in industrial use, of course, so without particular knowledge I wouldnt want to guess exactly what it was.

 

Pretty sure it was narrow gauge. Thirty or forty years ago I went looking for remains of some of these lines (I'm from NE Kent originally) and while there was little left of either lines or quarries there were bits and pieces lying around that suggest the tracks were two foot gauge or so. The bits and pieces were things like cast iron sleepers embedded in concrete so couldn't be salvaged. I don't recall if this was one of the ones I looked for - I'm no record keeper - but I was looking around Oare.

 

Some ten to fifteen years earlier too I was at a Scout camp in this area, again none too sure of the exact location except it was a bit outside Faversham. Then there were narrow gauge tracks lying beside the path we went up to get to the field we'd camped in. The line was obviously disused as the track had been lifted at the points it crossed another roadway and was dumped at the side as panels of track. At the time I thought narrow gauge meant Welsh railways like the Talyllyn so didn't really twig what this was.

[Nearholmer]

Having checked in my fading copy of IRS EL 1970, assuming we are at Ace Sand and Gravel, at TR013625, yes 2ft, and at that date a fleet of five MR, four being from the MoS WW2 orders I would guess by their dates and numbers, the other a 1935 machine.

[Nearholmer]

Heres a brilliant set of photos of chalk extraction at Barrington by Gordon Edgar ....... seems my memory was out by at least a decade as to when chalk ceased to be extracted by rail there (click on it; its a pictorial link).

 

 

Edited September 14, 2021 by Nearholmer