Abandoned rails in the road.....(or elsewhere...)

[009 micro modeller]

2 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Anything to do with the Snailbeach Railway or the Glyn Valley Tramway?

 

CJI.

The GVT did have a canal interchange and it’s in the right area. To me that seems more likely than the Snailbeach (I can’t remember if that linked to any canals).

[sir douglas]

ive just looked at the nls side by side OS, there's no tracks shown there on the south side of the road bridge

[Northmoor]

5 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

Anything to do with the Snailbeach Railway or the Glyn Valley Tramway?

 

CJI.

Definitely not the Snailbeach as that's over 30 miles away on the opposite side of Shrewsbury.

[Re6/6]

It's situated on the Shropshire Union Canal.

 

It's just off this magnificent structure which can be unnerving to traverse with railings on one side only !

 

 

Edited March 18 by Re6/6

[adanapress]

2 foot gauge tracks embedded in the surface of a small jetty on Salt Cay in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

[whart57]

The rails aren't there but the course of them is still marked on the quay at Ludcrofts Wharf, now part of the Ironbridge Gorge museum.

 

 

On old maps rails are also shown going out the other side of the building and around the warehouse and then crossing the road and going up the valley of a stream. This dale is Coalbrookdale, and this was one of the oldest tramways in the world. Not only that but Coalbrookdale works collaborated with Richard Trevithick to build his first steam locomotive, arguably the first steam locomotive ever. In the early seventies some old rails of the long disused tramway were found near Rose Cottage in the dale, and are now preserved by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum

 

A bit of important railway history commemorated by those ruts in the brickwork at the wharf.

 

So quite a bi

[whart57]

A link to a piece on Trevithick's collaboration with Coalbrookdale Works

 

https://preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com/richard-trevithick-1802-coalbrookdale-locomotive/

[whart57]

The main part of the Ironbridge Gorge museum is at Blists Hill, a mile or so downstream from Ludcrofts Wharf, on the other side of the Ironbridge itself. I didn't realise until I looked more closely at the nineteenth century 25" to the mile map of the Ironbridge area (thank you National Library of Scotland) how extensive the tramway networks on the north bank of the Severn were. A few "what-ifs" for narrow gauge modellers there I think. Particularly as the eighteenth century mines and workshops they served were smaller than the later nineteenth and twentieth century versions.

[Hunslet]

On 18/03/2024 at 10:38, Re6/6 said:

Neatly maintained old tracks near Pontcysyllte Viaduct presumably for loading and unloading canal traffic. It's rather nice to see abandoned tracks looked after.

 

 

 

Pontcysylle was the transshipment point for a tramway known as "Ruabon Brook" constructed by the Ellesmere Canal Company from local industries to the canal.

Conversion to standard Gauge took place in 1861 which in its new form ran from a loop on the Wrexham  Corwen and Shrewsbury GWR line running under the Corwen line at Acrefair.

The line was not owned by the GWR but the LNWR.

Pontcysllte rail canal traffic stopped before grouping but locos would visit the basin for water.

Info from "Forgotten Railways, North and Mid Wales," Rex Christiansen 1976.

[sir douglas]

But that was on the north side of the road bridge, this is south

[Hunslet]

14 hours ago, sir douglas said:

But that was on the north side of the road bridge, this is south

Although the 6-inch OS map shows no tracks south of the road bridge the book from which I quoted has a diagram showing tracks south of the bridge. Looking on Google streetmaps from a location close to the footbridge a tunnel or bridge which looks bricked up can be seen at the left of the canal under the road bridge which was where the line ran south of the bridge to the basin. Perhaps the tracks were removed before the OS map update.

Edited March 20 by Hunslet
More info

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Hunslet said:

tunnel or bridge which looks bricked up

It's actually got a pair of slatted doors.

And this is looking the other way:

Edited March 20 by melmerby

[melmerby]

A quote from a canal article:

"Wales, the Llangollen Canal too has an example of narrow gauge railway tracks: at Trevor, by the west end of the famous Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, a line of rails runs along the wharf for some distance, splitting into two to form a passing loop. Here, an early horse tramway, opened in the early 1800s, connected the wharf to coal mines at Wynn Hall, some two miles to the north. In the 1860s it was rebuilt to standard gauge and and became a freight branch of the mainline railway network, later extended to Wrexham; the original section closed in 1953. However the rails on the wharf now are narrow gauge: a fragment that somehow survived from before the 1860s rebuild (I’m not sure they look that old), or a modern re-creation?"

 

If you want more fakery, there is a section of narrow gauge track at Gas Steet Basin in Brum, it came from elsewhere:

Edited March 20 by melmerby

[Johann Marsbar]

Herm Harbour, Herm, Channel Islands.......

 

 

Apart from not knowing that any railed items had ever been used there, the object that used them is actually preserved nearby and was a bit of a surprise.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

....which is a circa 1850 hand crane built by Bray and Waddington in Leeds.....

 

 

...and the wheels have centre flanges!

 

[cctransuk]

13 minutes ago, Johann Marsbar said:

...and the wheels have centre flanges!

 

 

Err ... the wheels are double-flanged.

 

Centre flanges run on tramway rail with a centre slot.

 

CJI.

[Johann Marsbar]

6 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

Err ... the wheels are double-flanged.

 

Centre flanges run on tramway rail with a centre slot.

 

CJI.

Proves someones awake out there 🙂 (unlike me at the moment - but you haven't had to contend with the unbelievable stupidity of Virgin Medias Contractors over the past 4 days!)

[cctransuk]

1 minute ago, Johann Marsbar said:

Proves someones awake out there 🙂 (unlike me at the moment - but you haven't had to contend with the unbelievable stupidity of Virgin Medias Contractors over the past 4 days!)

 

Not Virgin Media, but we have a contractor for Wildernet ripping up every street in and around Bodmin at present!

 

G*d knows why - Bodmin was the first place in Britain to get BT Highspeed Broadband, some twelve years ago, and we are now fully fibre connected.

 

I cannot believe that a significant proportion of users are suddenly going to switch suppliers to Wildernet, but the works going on must be costing a fortune!

 

CJI.