Seaside & Holiday Island Narrow Gauge

[Compound2632]

On 12/03/2021 at 23:45, Pacific231G said:

an originally British initiated club it may be Hudson.

 

Yes, that could be somewhere near Henley on a sunny July day.

[Compound2632]

On 11/03/2021 at 18:09, Nearholmer said:

Some really interesting station architecture, I particularly like the ones that seemed to be Viking cricket pavilions, and now I want to add a suitably ornate-ended beam to the apex of the garden shed.

 

Rønne Nord, though, would easily pass for somewhere in East Anglia.

[Tim V]

Burnham on Sea has the well known extension of the S&D onto the pier, but round by the sailing club is this bit of narrow gauge.

[Pacific231G]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

St Michael's Mount? Half railway, half dumb-waiter. 

 

Mont St Michel? If ever a railway ought to be reinstated, that's one. There were some other very characterful little lines not far away too.

 

BTW, the latest edition of the NGRS journal seems to have caught the spirit of this thread, containing good articles about St Kitts and Majorca.

I wonder if the NGRS journal has ever covered the Tigre boat railways?

There have been schemes at various times to reinstate the SG light railway that used to run to Mont. St. Michel. The lines of the CF Calavados were indeed characterful though I think the 60cm gauge was always a bit too narrow for longish common carriers though ideal for industrial and agricultural raiways. Originally in France, d'Intêret Local railways and tramways were supposed to be standard or metre gauge  but it was Paul Decauville who pushed for 60cm to be accepted also. 750/760/2ft 6ins does seem to have been a better compromise  between carrying capacity and cost and was adopted very succesfully as the secondary gauge by the Austro-Hungarian empire. 

[Pacific231G]

8 minutes ago, Tim V said:

Burnham on Sea has the well known extension of the S&D onto the pier, but round by the sailing club is this bit of narrow gauge.

Fascinating. Do you think it might have been a slipway railway for launching boats such as small fishing vessdels ? They used to be very common.

[Tim V]

1 minute ago, Pacific231G said:

Fascinating. Do you think it might have been a slipway railway for launching boats such as small fishing vessdels ? They used to be very common.

No the sailing club storage area is across the footpath I'm standing on. Unless at some point in the dim/distant past there were fishing boats there.

[Nearholmer]

8 minutes ago, Pacific231G said:

I wonder if the NGRS journal has ever covered the Tigre boat railways?

 

Well, I could look through all 266 editions to check, but I'm supposed to be making a roast lunch.

 

The near to MStM line that I was thinking of was an obscure little tramway, rather than CFC, but I haven't got time to look-up the details now (see above).

[Northroader]

There was a really good model of Burnham on Sea made which showed that adjacent to the station there was a lifeboat house, and a standard gauge line carried the lifeboat to be launched down a slipway.

[Nearholmer]

Is there a bell-code for "lifeboat proceeding to rescue", or would you use the same one as for a breakdown train?

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, Northroader said:

There was a really good model of Burnham on Sea made which showed that adjacent to the station there was a lifeboat house, and a standard gauge line carried the lifeboat to be launched down a slipway.

 

I heard about this before, and I remember reading that the lifeboat railway stayed in place for some time after closure (presumably hand-propelled in any case).

 

One question comes to mind from looking at that photo of the model - why was it necessary for the lifeboat track to be physically connected to the main line at all?

[Compound2632]

If modelling's allowed, who can forget Woolacombe?

 

 

 

[Pacific231G]

9 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

I heard about this before, and I remember reading that the lifeboat railway stayed in place for some time after closure (presumably hand-propelled in any case).

 

One question comes to mind from looking at that photo of the model - why was it necessary for the lifeboat track to be physically connected to the main line at all?

 

Because, apart from the siding into the lifeboat station, it  hadn't been built for that purpose. The branch to Burnham was partly intended to tap seaborne traffic across the Bristol Channel. Highbridge was already an inland port for small vessels carying general goods but Burnham, as well as having resort potential, would be better for passenger (and cattle) steamers. So, the line to Burnham ran for about 300m beyond the station to the end of a newly built stone pier.  Unfortunately, the gradient between the station and the foot of pier was too steep for passenger vehicles or locos but wagons and possibly passenger luggage vans were winched up and down the incline.  At one time in the nineteenth century there was even a regular service from Poole to Burnham as part of a ship, train, ship, service from Cherbourg to Cardiff. 

 

(Update) In 1874 a new lifeboat station was opened close to the station with a siding connecting it to the pier railway on which ran the launching trolley for the lifeboat. (It's not clear whether that was winched down to the pier and  its slipway (presumably at the end of the pier) or handled by horses. In the end Burnham wasn't a great success as a steamer pier, too many problems of silting, and seems to have fallen out of use after around 1910. The RNLI continued to use the pier for their lifeboat until 1930 after which the siding was lifted and the "main line" ended at at landward side of the newly extended Marine Parade extened across it. The track then ended in a buffer stop  and formed the end of the station's run round. Regular passenger services ceased in  1951 but the station continued to be used for excursion traffic and goods until the end of the 1962 summer season and May 1963 respectively.

There's a good account of the pier's history here with some contemporary photos of the pier with track still in place.

https://machorne.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/an-unusual-surviving-railway-pier/

 

What's not clear is how much if any overlap there ever was between the use of the pier for railway traffic and its use by the lifeboat.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Pacific231G
update

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Pacific231G said:

 

Because, apart from the siding into the lifeboat station, it  hadn't been built for that purpose. The branch to Burnham was partly intended to tap seaborne traffic across the Bristol Channel. Highbridge was already an inland port for small vessels carying general goods but Burnham, as well as having resort potential, would be better for passenger (and cattle) steamers. So, the line to Burnham ran for about 300m beyond the station to the end of a newly built stone pier.  Unfortunately, the gradient between the station and the foot of pier was too steep for passenger vehicles or locos but wagons and possibly passenger luggage vans were winched up and down the incline.  At one time in the nineteenth century there was even a regular service from Poole to Burnham as part of a ship, train, ship, service from Cherbourg to Cardiff. 

 

At some stage a siding was added into the lifeboat station - the lifeboats also being able to be winched down to the pier and run to deep water at the end. In the end Burnham wasn't a great success as a steamer pier, too many problems of silting, and seems to have fallen out of use after around 1910. The lifeboat continued to use the pier for their lifeboat until 1930 after which the siding was lifted and the "main line" ended at at landward side of the newly extended Marine Parade extened across it. The track then ended in a buffer stop  and formed the end of the station's run round. Regular passenger services ceased in  1951 but the station continued to be used for excursion traffic and goods until the end of the 1962 summer season and May 1963 respectively.

There's a good account of the pier's history here with some contemporary photos of the pier with track still in place.

https://machorne.wordpress.com/2013/09/23/an-unusual-surviving-railway-pier/

 

What's not clear is how much if any overlap there ever was between the use of the pier for railway traffic and its use by the lifeboat.

 

OK, that makes sense. I couldn’t make out the stone pier in the photo of the model so wasn’t sure. That blog post seems to contradict what I’d previously thought, as it suggests the main railway lasted longer than the lifeboat track.

[Pacific231G]

5 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

OK, that makes sense. I couldn’t make out the stone pier in the photo of the model so wasn’t sure. That blog post seems to contradict what I’d previously thought, as it suggests the main railway lasted longer than the lifeboat track.

I've just looked at the 25 inch OS maps from the National Library of Scotland and, in 1883, so less than ten years after the new lifeboat station was built directly adjoining the seaward end of the station buildings, there was a line running the length of the pier with a siding running alongside it for about the first third of the pier's length. There's also a narrower extension- possibly a slipway- at the end of the pier alingned with the end of the railway but with no railway track actually marked on it. That might though be a breakwater or a landing stage and it's immediately beyond the low tide mark.   That arrangement hadn't changed in 1902 but, by 1929- just before the lifeboat station was closed- the track to the end of the pier was still there but the siding on the pier had gone- suggesting that the lifeboat trolley was the only thing then using the pier railway though though that was still connected to the station with the same siding for the lifeboat station. At that time there was no road or path crossing the line- The 1:1250 map published in 1962 but surveyed some time earlier shows the railway line ending well short of the pier so just long enough to be a loco release, no track on the pier or leading to the former lifeboat station and a dotted road crossing the former line of the pier raiwlay to access development south of there.    

The blogger's comments on inconsistencies in the OS maps seem to be based on the one inch to the mile maps. There's no inconsistency in the large scale maps.

There are some photos of the  pier here when steamers still used it

http://www.captureburnham.co.uk/other/shipping

and some others showing the lifeboat on its railway trolley but all of those are at the shoreward end.

It looks as it the jetty gently descended with the beach which would have made it possible to simply float the lifeboat off as any state of the tide.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Pacific231G

[Ben B]

You know, this was such a dangerous thread...  There I was, beavering away on an industrial line in 7/8ths Scale for the Facebook groups model railway competition, and then I spent too many days looking on here, and;

 

 

My entry for the competition.  1/10th (roughly) scale as all I had to hand at short notice were Dr.Who figures.  Steam-outline diesel loco on the miniature railway, a seaside line in the mid 1990's a bit down on its luck, at an equally slightly care-worn fictional coastal resort in Cumbria.  

 

Seriously, thanks to everybody who took time to post such inspirational images on this thread, I've loved it, it's been very useful, and it brightened some very dark months   I'll put a full topic on my micro layout somewhere on RMWeb in the next couple of days.

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, Ben B said:

You know, this was such a dangerous thread...  There I was, beavering away on an industrial line in 7/8ths Scale for the Facebook groups model railway competition, and then I spent too many days looking on here, and;

 

 

My entry for the competition.  1/10th (roughly) scale as all I had to hand at short notice were Dr.Who figures.  Steam-outline diesel loco on the miniature railway, a seaside line in the mid 1990's a bit down on its luck, at an equally slightly care-worn fictional coastal resort in Cumbria.  

 

Seriously, thanks to everybody who took time to post such inspirational images on this thread, I've loved it, it's been very useful, and it brightened some very dark months   I'll put a full topic on my micro layout somewhere on RMWeb in the next couple of days.

 

Very nice. What’s the loco made out of?

[Ben B]

11 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Very nice. What’s the loco made out of?

 

The loco was a battery-powered toy for 00 tracks, vaguely Germanic (but with a cowcatcher) on a bulky 0-4-0 chassis that was somewhat unbalanced.  I don't know the manufacturer, I bought the set off ebay for the track.

 

I modified it to a rough US-ish outline to be kind of reminiscent of the Severn-Lamb Colorado types I remembered from theme parks at the time, like the one at the West Mids Safari Park.  The paint job is a bit rough, but it was a bit of a rush job to hit the deadline.

 

It sits on a Triang TT Southern pacific chassis, the tender is a pair of toy TT tender sides, and a load of plasticard, on a Triang brake van chassis. Details are a right bodge of bits, old toys, 00 fences, kit parts, and so on. The oversize loco lamp came off a G scale loco I think

[Nearholmer]

Mega-original!

 

The figures are very life-like by model people standards.

 

I occasionally ponder the idea of 1:10 scale on 45mm gauge, it being nearly spot-on for 18" gauge, maybe just a loco and a few wagons to trundle round my existing, very simple, garden circuit .......... probably yet another diversion that I will never get time to pursue.

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, Ben B said:

It sits on a Triang TT Southern pacific chassis

 

Wouldn’t that make it about 5 inch gauge in 1:10? It looks a bit bigger than that.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I occasionally ponder the idea of 1:10 scale on 45mm gauge, it being nearly spot-on for 18" gauge

 

Could the G scale Bachmann ‘Emily’ be used to create a rough representation of the Jaywick Single?

[Ben B]

1 minute ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

Wouldn’t that make it about 5 inch gauge in 1:10? It looks a bit bigger than that.

 

 

Possibly, I decided to not get too bogged down with the maths. I'll be honest, my main priority was using what I had to hand, to hit the deadline, in the cheapest way possible

[Nearholmer]

3 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Could the G scale Bachmann ‘Emily’ be used to create a rough representation of the Jaywick Single?

 

Possibly. But, I have a thing about making model railways based on miniature railways - it just seems wrong to me. In fact, I'm not totally sure about miniature railways at all, to my mind most of them would be better as narrow gauge, bottoming-out at minimum gauge.

[EddieB]

On 15/02/2021 at 10:02, Andy Kirkham said:

Do we know anything about the loco(s)? The one in the picture looks to me as if it might be a Manning, Wardle.

New to this thread, but I can't see the question has been answered yet.

 

The only steam loco listed for the Seaton Brick & Tile Co, Strathbathie (Aberdeen, 3'0" gauge) is Hudswell Clarke 0-4-0ST NEWBURGH (HC 545/1899).  There was also a petrol railcar built by Duff (Aberdeen), that went to the Murcar Golf Club (1924), where it was joined by another railcar (1932) from Wickham (presumbly the one shown in the original posting on p3 of this thread).

 

[Ben B]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Possibly. But, I have a thing about making model railways based on miniature railways - it just seems wrong to me. In fact, I'm not totally sure about miniature railways at all, to my mind most of them would be better as narrow gauge, bottoming-out at minimum gauge.

 

I did actually look into it as an early option for this- inspired by all those French beach railways earlier in the post. I envisaged a couple of Wickham Trolley type vehicles ferrying tourists to the beach, but the mockup of the vehicles and even a simple halt just dominated the space. 4 sq foot doesn't give much room to manouvre, so in the end I went miniature just to be able to fit some scenery in

[009 micro modeller]

5 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I have a thing about making model railways based on miniature railways - it just seems wrong to me.

 

I think somewhere like Jaywick is quite distinctive, including in terms of the other stock used. There is a slight issue with just using smaller scale locos as “miniature locos” because they don’t always scale in the same way with respect to the track gauge as the model does. Apparently this is an issue with the RHDR locos, and it seems it is also an issue with my 1:12 scale Christmas layout, on which the T gauge train is fairly accurate for 0 gauge (a model rather than miniature in this case) but the scale is less accurate (it should be 1:522 rather than 1:450). Edit: just realised this would actually work better in 1:10 scale, as it would represent a model railway of 1:45 scale and 30mm gauge which is actually closer, but I get the impression that some of the items I used (intended for dolls’ houses) would be less easy to get hold of in 1:10 than they are in 1:12. Anyway that’s drifting a bit too far off topic.

 

I’ve often thought about doing a 1:12 scale model of a 3 1/2 or 5 inch gauge sit astride miniature line, with a raised track. 9mm gauge would scale up to 4 1/4 inches in 1:12 (halfway between 3 1/2 and 5) so I would hopefully be able to use 009 or N gauge locos for this, although I’m not sure I would be able to get the sit astride coaches to work very well, especially over curved track. 

Edited March 31, 2021 by 009 micro modeller

[Hunslet]

 

Littlehampton Miniature Railway in steam days

 

 

Some locos at Littlehampton of smaller gauge on the same day as above.

Date not known.

 

 

An internal combustion "thing" at Littlehampton