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A question about HOn30 in the UK?


Keith Addenbrooke
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3 hours ago, Stoker said:

Another favourite of mine that I've not really seen very much of at all, is TTn3, which uses 9mm gauge track and 3mm scale to represent true 3 foot gauge. I've thought for a while now that Walthers slightly underscale blast furnace would be "just right" at 3mm scale, and an excellent focal point for a typical 3 foot gauge steel plant railway.

 

I think there’s a few people in the 009 Society (and no doubt a few more in the 3mm Society, though I’m not involved with that) who use this combination for Irish railways (it’s probably seen as a better alternative for modelling 3ft gauge than 00n3 or H0n3 due to the wider availability of 9mm gauge stuff, as opposed to 10.5mm or 12mm). If I was going to do a 3ft gauge UK or Irish prototype I’d definitely look into TTn3 more myself. I’m not sure how useful it would be for US prototypes more generally though - isn’t US TT 1:120, same as in Europe? Though I have also seen 1:120 on 9mm used to represent New Zealand 3’ 6” gauge, and I think to represent the same gauge in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Slightly off topic, I think one of Don and Val Sibley’s Belgian Vicinal tram layouts was 1:100 (basically 3mm) on 9mm.

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3mm to the foot is technically 1:101, but I suppose whether you use 100 or 101 will depend on whether having a "round foot" or "round scale" is more important to you... I doubt the difference between the two would be visually obvious. 1:120 US TT is an absolute dinosaur at this point so that standard isn't really relevant. Since 3D printers allow us to have scaled scenery items such as cars, trucks, figures, etc. in whatever scale we like I'd say there isn't really a need to use one scale over another - once you deviate outside of HO, O, or N there isn't any support so using 1:101 over 1:120 doesn't change anything except the accuracy of the gauge. Like I said earlier, the Walthers Cornerstone structures are often slightly under-scale/selectively compressed, so with a bit of minor modification the HO structures can become "decompressed" 3mm scale structures without taking up any extra space.

Of course the other way to do it is to use HOn3, and 3D print components that allow you to re-gauge HO chassis.

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11 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

Wasn’t 3ft also generally what was available in Britain, prior to WW1?

 

I was going to say "No" but after the recent fracas I'll change it to "not really"! Most British NG locos came from independent locomotive builders and they would produce the loco to whatever gauge the buyer required them, so, as such, there was no preference for one gauge or another. As most British industrial NG lines tended to be 2ft gauge that was the most common, but if you take a look at the Manufacturer's catalogues you will see plenty of other gauges offered as alternatives as they sold their wares all over the world.

 

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2 minutes ago, Hobby said:

 

I was going to say "No" but after the recent fracas I'll change it to "not really"! Most British NG locos came from independent locomotive builders and they would produce the loco to whatever gauge the buyer required them, so, as such, there was no preference for one gauge or another. As most British industrial NG lines tended to be 2ft gauge that was the most common, but if you take a look at the Manufacturer's catalogues you will see plenty of other gauges offered as alternatives as they sold their wares all over the world.

 

 

Though lots of contractors’ equipment was built to 3ft gauge, prior to the influx of ex-WDLR 60cm equipment.

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SG, 3ft, 2ft, it varied, much contractors stuff was hand pushed as well. Again most of their locos were just bought from the catalogues and could be made to different gauges and they were often changed. I'd suggest that 2ft(ish) gauge was the most common narrow gauge used in Britain, though, by numbers of individual railways, rather than mileage.

Edited by Hobby
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I’d not be confident to state it firmly, but I’d be pretty sure that pre-WW1 there were more c3ft locomotives in Britain than c2ft, because almost anything that involved shifting sognificant quantities of dirt, construction, quarrying etc, used 3ft gauge saddle tanks, wooden side tippers, and movable track panels. The Midlands ironstone industry hung on in this mode until the 1960s.

 

Post WW1, i.c. locomotives took over from horses on short, c2ft railways, so the balance probably tipped in favour of 2ft locos at that stage.

 

Mileage of track would be another question, and my gut feel is that probably the same applied, as big straggly lines like Smiths at Nocton, Leighton Buzzard, various military sites, and some long coastal defence projects took place, but there were so many lines, of so many different gauges, that totting it all up would take an age.

 

There was still a 16” gauge hand and cable system in use at Napton brickworks into the 1970s, so one thing Britain had was variety!

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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I'm not sure you are correct. For instance when the Welshpool was built the contractors locos were 30" gauge plus one standard gauge! They were more than often the same gauge as the final line. 

 

They also tended to use what they had, often re gauging them if required and in some cases selling them on after the contract was complete. It would also depend on the size of the contract, if large amounts of earth and rock was to be moved then sg would be more likely, though probably one of the best known contractors railways was for a dam and in 3' gauge! 

 

I'll be honest and say that I have no hard evidence of what I say other than the Welshpool example which was lifted from Cartright's book. But looking at the reprints of the loco manufacturers catalogues show a large number of gauges, with many locos and stock advertised as being available in several different gauges, so to say one particular gauge was favoured over others is I feel misleading. 

 

I suspect the only way of finding out would be to check the records of the contractors, but I suspect the would be impossible! 

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The Wiki link certainly shows that pre ww1 3' gauge was very common, and would back up what you said about that era but even then 2' was common as was other gauges. Obviously the availability of war surplus after ww1 certainly tipped any balance. 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_industrial_narrow-gauge_railways

 

Not sure if we've wandered a bit off topic! 

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1 hour ago, Hobby said:

I'm not sure you are correct.


Neither am I, but I’d call myself 80% confident, based on c50 years membership of the NGRS, c30 years (now lapsed) membership of the IRS, and many hours spent s adding through the small ads in ancient copies of ‘Machinery Market’, which was the Exchange & Mart for locos.

 

The picture will vary by locality, so Gwynedd and Caerns. probably had an unusually high ratio of c2ft locos built pre -WW1, and Kent probably a very high ratio of c3ft  built pre-WW1 they had a lot of very strange gauges in the cement industry, but ‘roughly 3ft’.

 

If I’m really, really bored later, I will run a count on a randomly selected IRS handbook. Counting in makers works lists won’t work, because some of them were biased to particular sizes of locos.

 

OT? Moi?

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OK, I thought of a quick way of running a 2ft vs 3ft locomotive comparison, using a recent IRS handbook, which is indexed in a helpful way, so here goes:

 

Buckinghsamshire, Bedfordshire and Northants

 

Up to 1914 locos:

 

c2ft (I included one of 1'8" and one of 2ft 3in, which also appears in Sussex below) = 16 (this figure is artificially inflated by the modern LBNGRS collection, which contains things like 'Chaloner', but too much of a faff to strip this out)

 

2ft 6in = 9 (again artificially inflated, this time by Whipsnade Zoo Rly)

 

3ft, 3ft 3in, and Metre = 37 (Metre and "Imperial Metre" were used in the ironstone industry. These are I think all 'native' locos, not imported purely for preservation, although there may be one or two 'preservation imports')

 

Post-1914 the number of internal combustion engine c2ft gauge locos simply swamps everything else (and that is not counting all the MRTC/MR/SMH locos that were actually built at Bedford), so it isn't worth counting the c3ft gauge locos, of which there were quite a few built for the brickworks industry, but nothing like so many.

 

Now, this isn't the picture for the whole of Britain, which will be a patchwork, but it does give some feel.

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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43 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Neither am I, but I’d call myself 80% confident, based on c50 years membership of the NGRS, c30 years (now lapsed) membership of the IRS, and many hours spent s adding through the small ads in ancient copies of ‘Machinery Market’, which was the Exchange & Mart for locos.

 

Better make sure you research the correct stuff, we've discussed contractors locos, industrial locos, mining locos and common carriers so far... Which particular one are you looking at?! Oh, and don't forget the era as well, which I feel we have agreed on, does make quite a difference, in particular pre and post-WW1...

 

Judging by my memberships of NGRS(!) it would seem that 2ft is by far the most common, followed by miniature (20" and below!)... ;) 

 

 

 

EDIT: Posted at the same time as yours!

 

I'd expect that area to be heavy on the 3ft/Metre for the same reason NW Wales is heavy on c2ft, it is the chosen gauge for the local mining. More interesting would be somewhere without mining, but that is probably quite difficult in the UK as it was just about everywhere.. How about coal, SG outside but mainly 2ft gauge inside, though mainly hand and pony pulled pre WW1.

Edited by Hobby
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I'm counting all locos, excluding street tramway locos, and as you will see above I've split things into 'Up to 1914' and 'Post-1914'.

 

Now, in Britain, c2ft gauge locos are by far the more common than 3ft, but if you tot things up you will find that the vast majority of them were built Post-1914, and a surprisingly high proportion of the steamers never worked in the U.K. before preservation, even if they were built here.

 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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Another sample count, even easier, because there were so very few:

 

Herts & Middx

 

Up to 1914

 

2ft (inc. one at 1ft 8in) = 6 (this includes 'Chaloner' yet again, and several of the others only came here during preservation)

2ft 6in = 4 (two of which were requisitioned Pentewan Railway locos sored temporarily at Hanworth moor)

3ft = 4

 

After WW1, the area was brimming with 2ft gauge internal combustion locos.

 

PS: The Wikipedia list of UK industrial NG lines is a random pick, which represents only a tiny fraction of the lines that existed.

 

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1 hour ago, Hobby said:

More interesting would be somewhere without mining, but that is probably quite difficult in the UK as it was just about everywhere.. How about coal, SG outside but mainly 2ft gauge inside, though mainly hand and pony pulled pre WW1.

 

I don't have any IRS handbooks for colliery districts, but if you consider how late the Buxton flameproof spec was arrived at, there were very few locos underground in collieries before 1914.

 

Sussex & Surrey (both had a few small mines of various kinds, but nothing like the density in other places and none used locos pre-1914)

 

Up to 1914

 

1ft 6in = 2

2ft = 0 (locos present in the area pre-WW1. A batch of Davenport locos built pre-WW1 arrived from Canada in the early 1920s, plus a few other pre-WW1 locos, for various contracts, then a huge influx of locos for preservation came post 1960, many from abroad)

2ft 3in = 1

2ft 6in = 0 (1 arrived later from overseas for preservation)

3ft (inc. a bit over) = 9 (7 industrial; 2 R&CT)

 

Post-1914 - vast numbers of 2ft gauge internal combustion locos, plus a smattering of 2ft steamers and 18in battery-electrics, barely any further c3ft gauge.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Nearholmer
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It seems a shame to hide this conversation on contractors' narrow gauges in the UK here on page 3 of this conversation, so I've posted a separate topic in the Narrow Gauge Prototype section of the Forum with a link to the top of this page.

 

Hope that's OK - thank you for the contributions, interesting reading (it's an area I don't think I've ever thought about before).

 

Keith.

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