Seaside & Holiday Island Narrow Gauge

[Pacific231G]

On 22/02/2021 at 14:53, Pacific231G said:

I'll do my best. I can offer the sand and sun but not the bathing costumes though by way of compensation I can offer a boat train.

 

 

 

I came upon this railway while visiting the Ile d'Oleron  (south of La Rochelle) in June 1994.

It ran from a car park for no more than two or three  hundred metres to the top of a beach on the north coast of the Island and took passengers to and from a boat or boats  that ran to Fort Boyard or around the bay. What you see is pretty well all there was. No points, buildings or sheds.  The train simply shuttled through the woods and down to the beach where the boards you can see to the left of the "platform" allowed boat passengers to  walk to a wooden landing stage to board the boat without having to trudge through the very soft sand.

I can find absolutely no trace of it on Google Earth but there's a been a lot of develoment on the Island in 25 years and the railway seemed to follow the principle of

1, use a bulldozer to create a level path,

2 deposit track on the path.

3, lift train onto  track and run it.

So, when it was removed it would have very quickly left no trace of itself.

I assume the train was put on the track at the start of each season and stored elsewhere for the winter. Possibly the whole railway was.

I've just found my local map of the Ile d'Oléron from that trip and the "petit train" (as it is shown on the map) was a bit longer than I'd remembered. It ran for about 400m behind the main beach at Boyardville and connected the nearest road access (about half a mile north of the town of Boyardville) to the "Embarcadere" - the fairly substantial jetty that served the inter-isle cruisers that ran to the small Ile d'Aix , the even smaller Fort Boyard and much further to the Ile de Ré from April to September. Why it was built there rather than in Boyardville- from where I think they now  sail-  isn't clear. Looking at modern aerial photos it's possible to make out most of the path the line ran along and you can see the site of the southern terminus on Street View but with no remains of the railway. There's also no sign of the former jetty but it's obvious that the movement of sand changed the shape of the beach to such an extent that it would have become landlocked. Funiculars and Cliff Railways apart I think that this, at about two thirds of the length of the Hythe Pier railway, may well have been the shortest railway in Europe  and possibly anywhere else, to have provided an actual transport service rather than just a ride. It would have been just long enough to be worth boarding to avoid a long trudge through the sand and was included in the boat fare

 

1993 map and current Google earth image to the same scale (more or less) 

the yellow vertical bar is 400m

Edited March 6, 2021 by Pacific231G
small update

[009 micro modeller]

26 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I've just found my local map of the Ile d'Oléron from that trip and the "petit train" (as it is shown on the map) was a bit longer than I'd remembered. It ran for about 400m behind the main beach at Boyardville and connected the nearest road access (about half a mile north of the town of Boyardville) to the "Embarcadere" - the fairly substantial jetty that served the inter-isle cruisers that ran to the small Ile d'Aix , the even smaller Fort Boyard and much further to the Ile de Ré from April to September. Why it was built there rather than in Boyardville- from where I think they now  sail-  isn't clear. Looking at modern aerial photos it's possible to make out most of the path the line ran along and you can see the site of the southern terminus on Street View but with no remains of the railway. There's also no sign of the former jetty but it's obvious that the movement of sand changed the shape of the beach to such an extent that it would have become landlocked. Funiculars and Cliff Railways apart I think that this, at about two thirds of the length of the Hythe Pier railway, may well have been the shortest railway in Europe  and possibly anywhere else, to have provided an actual transport service rather than just a ride. It would have been just long enough to be worth boarding to avoid a long trudge through the sand and I think it was provided as a free service by the cruiser company.   

 

1993 map and current Google earth image to the same scale (more or less) 

the yellow vertical bar is 400m

 

Even if it’s now gone I think this is nearby: https://www.oleron-island.com/getting-ready-my-holidays/leisures/activities-and-facilities/le-p-tit-train-de-st-trojan-16578

[Pacific231G]

On 04/03/2021 at 19:27, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Even if it’s now gone I think this is nearby: https://www.oleron-island.com/getting-ready-my-holidays/leisures/activities-and-facilities/le-p-tit-train-de-st-trojan-16578

Oh yes. The St. Trojan line is very well known and had been on the Island since 1963 . It's on the SW corner of the Island and aimed to reproduce the ambience of the Decauville line that before the war ran from Royan into the woods. For some reason I didn't visit it when I was there. I was only on the Island for the day and had, unfairly, dimissed it as a seaside "toy" railway, not realising how extensive it is.  It's effectively what the  earlier (1952) mile long and mainly roadside Tramway Forestier du Cap Ferret might have become if Jacques Milet had realised his full ambitions.

On Oléron, apart from general tourism and noshing on seafood, I was mainly trying to find traces of the metre gauge railways that once ran the length of the Island and from 1904-1934 used to provide its transport. I even went to St. Trojan to look for any remnants (with no success) but still paid no attention to the 1963 railway (twit!)

 

  I was using an old Michelin map and one of  the FACS books to trace the route of the metre gauge line and came upon the petit train (the 400m one) on the NW coast quite by chance while looking for traces of the branch of the Chemins de fer économiques des Charentes that once ran to Boyardville.  So far, I've not been able to discover when this very minimalist railway was built and when  it was dismantled. I think it was fairly ephemeral but it had been there for long enough to get onto the local  IGN (French version of  Ordnance Survey) map surveyed in 1990 and I was there in 1994.

Edited March 12, 2021 by Pacific231G
grammar

[Ben B]

Further to my earlier comments about Silloth in Cumbria- here's something railway related.  The standard gauge railway to the town is fairly well-known, if only because of the controversy surrounding the closure of the line and the protests on the final day.  And there is, or at least was, a small miniature railway operating in a holiday park to the west of the town, but I gather that line is out of use and possibly lifted.

 

 

However, on one of our day trips, we came across this- a pair of 7.25inch gauge miniature tracks on the seafront, in the trees behind the lifeboat station.  Subsequent research shows it was a short line that ran along the promenade in the 1980's, and closed some time in the mid 1990's.  Someone who rode the line mentioned on a miniature railways forum that it had live steam as well as diesel traction, and the above bit of track is all that remains of the locomotive shed, and indeed is the only visible remains of the line.  Again, might not be there now, the above shot was taken in 2006.

[Pacific231G]

On 04/03/2021 at 23:25, Pacific231G said:

 

On Oléron, apart from general tourism and noshing on seafood, I was mainly trying to find traces of the metre gauge railways that once ran the length of the Island and from 1904-1934 used to provide its transport. I even went to St. Trojan but still paid no attention to the 1963 railway (twit!)

So far, I've not been able to discover when this very minimalist railway (the CF de Boyardville) was built and when  it was dismantled. I think it was fairly ephemeral but it had been there for long enough to get onto the local  IGN (French version of  Ordnance Survey) map surveyed in 1990 and I was there in 1994.

I've found a bit more about this little railway  that ran behind the Boyardville beach from the French Passions Metrique site. It had a much longer life than I'd thought; almost as long in fact as the metre gauge steam railway that, from 1904 to 1935, ran the length of the Ile d'Oléron with a short branch to Boyardville (Almost sixty years later I found some remaining track on the quayside there though I think it's now buried under tarmac)

 

It was built in about 1970 to connect a ticket office for the Vedettes (the boats that provide the inter isles service) with a pier on the Plage de Boyardville (Boyardville beach)  quoted as being a distance of 600-700m (By the time I saw it, the line was shorter than that at about 400-450m)  In about 1974 it was extended further north- one report says it doubled in length- to offer rides to holidaymakers in between the "boat train" services. Its new northern terminus was between a large campsite and the sea  but that service seems not to have been successful as the extension apparently only lasted for one or two seasons.

Postcard of the Boyardville train near the jetty terminus  looking towards the sea  probably 1970s. The coaches were on Decauville chassis and were later lengthened to four bays

 

Originally, a single loco, supplied by Patry, pulled and pushed a train of five open toast rack coaches and one report says that there was a single set of points leading to a corrugated iron loco shed. There was no sign of that when I visited the line.  After a few years, safety concerns led to a second loco being attached to the other end of the train so that the driver could always be at the front (though often didn't bother!).

I had remembered seeing only one loco but, looking at my photo more closely, I think the train was top and tailed. 

Eventually, deposition of sand on the beach (possibly over a single winter) rendered the jetty  useless and the Vedettes now run from the quayside at Boyardville (why they didn't always I have no idea- difficult currents perhaps ?) Without the boats the railway lost its raison d'etre  and was too short to be a "train touristique" so it closed, probably in about 1995. The ONF (Forestry Commission)  then demanded that the track be removed and the site restored. Given how lightly laid it was, simply removing the track would have achieved that though the rough wooden "platforms" and the jetty  were also removed. Apart from an interestingly curved and flat footpath (judging by Streetview and aerial mapping photos) there sems now to be no trace at all that the railway or pier were ever there. The locos, coaches and track were eventually sold to a couple of preservation outfits; one of them at "Bon Repose" on the trackbed of the former metre gauge Reseau Breton in Britttany.  

 

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2021 by Pacific231G
updated from another source

[Johann Marsbar]

Does this one count?

 

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07cjvmc/the-tiny-german-island-with-a-population-of-16

[St Enodoc]

1 hour ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Does this one count?

 

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07cjvmc/the-tiny-german-island-with-a-population-of-16

Unquestionably!

[Nearholmer]

Definitely. It and the others there already got a mention back up thread, but I’d never seen that report, so many thanks.

[Johann Marsbar]

5 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

Unquestionably!

There are a couple of lines like that which feature in my S&W Eisenbahnatlas Deutschland - this one is 900mm gauge, the other 600mm gauge - which run from the mainland out to a couple of small islands in the North Sea, but hadn't seen any film of them until I found that BBC report this am.

Edited March 7, 2021 by Johann Marsbar

[Nearholmer]

Northroader linked to the better website about them, but here is Wikipedia, which isn’t to be trusted on some details https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inselbahn

 

And, here is the particular entry for Oland https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halligbahn_Dagebüll–Oland–Langeneß

Edited March 7, 2021 by Nearholmer

[whart57]

I wonder if something like the Oland railway could be laid across the Lindisfarne causeway. It would mean they could keep tourists' cars off Holy Island.

[melmerby]

5 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Does this one count?

 

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07cjvmc/the-tiny-german-island-with-a-population-of-16

A Google view (2017) on the causeway between Oland & Langeneß

https://goo.gl/maps/2uzeeicRgLrBFc7k7

 

Looks like recent track renewal

[Pacific231G]

9 hours ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Does this one count?

 

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07cjvmc/the-tiny-german-island-with-a-population-of-16

Absolutely it does. What a great little film and good to see a Felbdahn still providing essential transport.  

[Nearholmer]

Just struck me that these are actually a form of U-bahn, as in unterseebahn.

[melmerby]

12 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Just struck me that these are actually a form of U-bahn, as in unterseebahn.

Defintely time for a groan button!

 

F-Bahn (Fischenbahn)?

[Nearholmer]

I posted a link to a fischbahn up-thread. There were also teichgutbahnen, used to distribute food to carp ponds at a few places, including one in Britain, but I can’t remember where in Britain.

 

If you ferret on you tube there is a video of one of the German ones.

 

Ah, here’s a good write-up with photos of one https://www.entlang-der-gleise.de/Feldbahnen/Wirtschaftsfeldbahn-Birkenhof.html

 

And, some beautiful photos of Dungeness fishing railways http://www.urban75.org/photos/kent/dungeness-railway-01.html

 

 

Edited March 7, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Northroader]

Here’s an old photo of seaside line, one of the inselbahn, Wangerooge. The scenic treatment would be fun, until you got to the runout at each end, no buses on bridges here.

[Nearholmer]

Brilliant.

 

I have a perfect plan for doing that using LGB and the pond across the road from our house.

[melmerby]

I've been having a closer look at those Frisian Island railways and they are an interesting collection. Even the smallest seem to have has some sort of railway at some time.

One even has a double track, regular passenger services and modern infrastructure (Borkum), Others seem to go from nowhere and end up nowhere, on causeways disappearing beneath the waves (Minsener Oog).

Spiekeroog even has a restored Pferdebahn over part of the existing route.

 

[whart57]

12 hours ago, Northroader said:

Here’s an old photo of seaside line, one of the inselbahn, Wangerooge. The scenic treatment would be fun, until you got to the runout at each end, no buses on bridges here.

 

 

Refer to programme 4 of the Great Model Railway Challenge, series 2, still available on My5, for how to flood a railway when the tide comes in.

[6990WitherslackHall]

I don't know if this railway has already been mentioned, But another one is the Hayling Seaside Railway. Its gauge is 2 ft (610 mm) and operates passenger trains between Beachlands and Eastoke Corner. Although it is mainly a diesel operated railway, the railway sometimes hires steam locomotives from other railways.

 

Work started in October 2001 on the building of Beachlands Station on land leased from the nearby amusement park. Work continued through 2002 and the line finally opened to passengers on 5 July 2003.

 

The line currently has four locos and as previously mentioned, they are all diesels.

 

Motor Rail 14wDH No. 1  Alan B Built in 1937

Alan Keef 0-4-0DH No. 3 Jack Built in 1988

Ruston & Hornsby 4wDM No. 4 Alistair Built in 1940

Ruston & Hornsby 4wDMAn No. 5 Edwin Built in 1967 

 

They also have four coaches and a few wagons. 

 

 

0-4-0DH Jack built by Alan Keef

 

 

All four locomotives (left to right): No. 1 Alan B, No. 5 Edwin, No. 4 Alistair and No. 3 Jack. 

 

 

 

In September 2019, the owners put the business up for sale by lease or outright purchase in regard to their wishes to retire and travel.

Edited March 8, 2021 by 6990WitherslackHall

[6990WitherslackHall]

25 minutes ago, whart57 said:

Refer to programme 4 of the Great Model Railway Challenge, series 2, still available on My5, for how to flood a railway when the tide comes in.

 

How they managed that without frying the locomotives just shocked me.

Edited March 8, 2021 by 6990WitherslackHall

[whart57]

19 minutes ago, melmerby said:

I've been having a closer look at those Frisian Island railways and they are an interesting collection. Even the smallest seem to have has some sort of railway at some time.

 

 

Interestingly none of the Dutch islands ever had one. One was planned for the biggest island (Texel) but was never built. Perhaps the reason was that Germany had a far more active state when it came to planning and building railways whereas the system in the Netherlands was for private entrepreneurs to propose a line and then get concessions and backing from provincial and district authorities.

 

Or perhaps the reason was military, as immortalised in Erskine Childers' Riddle of the Sands. Which is incidentally a decent film with some good railway sequences filmed on the Hoorn-Medemblik preserved line. Not necessarily in the way Childers described but more as a defensive measure, the Germans feeling the Frisian and Holstein coasts were vulnerable to invasion given the Royal Navy's overwhelming supremacy at sea so could not afford to leave the islands without good communications. The Dutch, whose instinct was to stay out of wars, didn't feel the same pressures.

[whart57]

5 minutes ago, 6990WitherslackHall said:

 

How they managed that without electrocuting themselves just shocked me.

 

Pretty hard to electrocute yourself with 12 volts. I was team captain for that and we had to convince the TV company's H&S it was safe. In the end they deemed the biggest risk was water spilling onto the floor and cameramen slipping onto their backsides while carrying a few grand's worth of kit.

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, 6990WitherslackHall said:

 

How they managed that without frying the locomotives just shocked me.

Pure water (without impurities) isn't a good conductor.

(I experimented with electrolysis many years ago!)