When does a model become a railway

[hayfield]

I must admit in the past to being a railway snob, if it did not have green engine's, was shiny and worked I was not interested, and as for large scale models being a railway, out of the question.

 

My wife's parents live in SE Kent so quite often a trip out might include some railway. The past 2 summers have included trips to the RH&D railway, last summer Dungerness this summer New Romney and Hythe, I have started to see this railway in a different light.

 

 

I have always marvelled at the skill needed to build these locos

 

 

But when you see them pull away very slowly at first (as they have 14 loaded coaches) then gain momentum, you can see the steam working out of the cylinders smoke from the chimney and hear the sounds of the loco come to life, they are engine's in their own right.

 

 

Then my mother in law said she would like to bring her great grand children (5 & 3 yrs old) as 'its their size' realy hit a note

 

 

These are models of the real thing, but as a whole it is a working railway and offers a service the envy of most preserved railways.

 

Now going down to the local park and seeing similar somehow is not the same. I guess its the fact thats its going somewhere and coming back that holds the key to the question. I have changed from being a snob to an enthusiast

[ian]

Customs and Excise has a simple definition - if it can be used as a means of transport from A to B then it is a proper railway and a means of transport, so there's no VAT on the ticket price. If it can't be used to get from A to B (two 'stations' in the same park don't count) then it is an entertainment and is liable to VAT on the ticket price.

 

Simples

[DavidB]

I've always been interested in the different attitudes of enthusiasts towards the Romney, ranging from those who view it as a toy railway that isn't worthy of their interest, to those who are fascinated by all the details of its 80+ year existence.

 

For me, it's my favourite steam railway in the UK, for the simple reason that it is the only place imho where you can still enjoy all of the sensations of express steam in a traditional environment - regular interval operation of 12+ coach trains, hauled by beautifully maintained Pacifics and exotic 4-8-2s to tight timings, all doing exactly the same job that they were designed to do in the 1920s, and delivered in an atmosphere infused with all the trappings of the steam age. The trains may be small, but having driven Nos 2,6,8 and 11 (plus diesel 14) on driver experience days, I can confirm that there is nothing model-like whatsoever about the gutsy sensation of raw, deafening power as they pound their way into speed with a heavy load and then gallop for miles over jointed rails at the scale equivalent of 75mph. After many years travelling on full-sized preserved lines and sundry main line steam trips, only one journey has come close to equalling the Romney express experience, and that was the unique one-off Up Bristolian earlier this year, reeling off over 100 miles at an average speed of 70+mph.

 

So are the engines 'models'? Their looks are certainly based on the old LNER A1s of the Great Northern, but their engineering heritage is very different, being the culmination of many years of design development by Henry Greenly. Personally I think they stand alone as miniature masterpieces of engineering, as well as being very good-looking examples of industrial design at its best, as beautifully demonstrated by Hayfield's photo of Southern Maid at New Romney.

 

David (only slightly biased!)

[Guest Belgian]

I too thought of the Romney as a toy railway (with memories of visiting it when a small child) but was won over by its sheer spectacle when revisiting it some 10 years or so ago for one of the galas.

 

Just to see those magnificent East Coast Pacifics working flat-out seemed to be a return to the real railway and, for me, the sight of the two Gresley "might-have-beens" (he proposed a 4-8-2 version of the A3s) was just spell-binding. It's not a toy railway, it's a great railway!

 

JE

[Fat Controller]

It's sufficently close to being a real railway for Jacques Poré (the former president of the Institute of Railway Signalling Engineers) to write a three-part article on its operation in 'Rail Passion', starting in the last issue.

[jamie92208]

Yes Henry Greenly got a lot of things right, apart perhaps from leaving us with the awkward compromise of 00 gauge (A real can of worms) but the first 'scale models' that pulled 15" gauge stock on the Ravenglass and Eskdale were not up to the job being built to 1/4 scale the same as the gauge. Greenly's genius was to go for 1/3 scale locos on 1/4 scale track, River Esk was the result and then the Romney engines which with their larger driving wheels for the flatter track are superb. Hayfield has got it right that somehwere the line is crossed from model to real railway and the Ratty and the Romney have both crossed that line.

 

Jamie

[Poor Old Bruce]

I think a lot of poeple (self included) regard the smaller versions of 'real' railways as 'Miniature' railways if they are passenger hauling and using scaled down versions of rcognisable main line (or even industrial for that matter) prototypes, so that would include things from 15 inch gauge like the RH&DR and the R&ER down to 2.5 inch gauge. These should not be confused with narrow gauge working railways of course. The elctric ferrets which I suspect a lot of us on here play with at home are what can be regarded as 'Model' railways.

[tre pol and pen]

just how utterly magnificent would a standard gauge version of that 4-8-2 be however, and what a capable machine it would undoubtedly be too!

[jamie92208]

I think the difference between the Romney and ratty and other railways is that the first two serve a real transport need. The Romney with it's school trains and for many years the ratty with it's stone traffic. Though the locos were large scale models they were very heavily engineered by Greenly after the experience with the Bassett Lowke scale models at ravenglass. River Esk was built for stone haulage along with 6 marvellous bogie hoppers that I believe are still running as carriage underframes at Romney. Thus these two were more in keeping with Arthur heywood's original vision of ;Miniumum Gauge Railways' rather than minatire ones. I know it may sound a bit pedantic but I fullu understand what the OP means about the Romney being a real but small railway.

 

Jamie

[edcayton]

"1/3 scale loco's on 1/4 scale track". That'd be the prototype for 00 then!

 

Ed

[Welly]

I found this 2 part video of the RH&DR on YouTube which makes good watching.

 

Part 1

 

Part 2

 

I'd love to visit that line!

[jamie92208]

"1/3 scale loco's on 1/4 scale track". That'd be the prototype for 00 then!

 

Ed

 

Yes as far as I know Greenly came up with the same compromise as HO was already established by the German manufacturers as 'Half O Gauge' but the motors of the 1930's wouldn't fit into a british outline body built to 3.5mm scale so Greenly came up with the classic compromise that we live with today. In effect it's what he did with the Ratty and Romney as the 1/3 scale locos had plenty of power, much more robust frames, heavier flanges and also enough room for a driver to swing a small shovel in the can area and get some weather protection.

 

Hope I haven't been teaching any grandmothers to suck eggs, but I have a great affection for the Two big 15" l;ines having spent many happy days volunteering at Ravenglass before I got married. It was even one of the Ratty drivers who played a part in getting me and SWMBO together.

 

Jamie

[Buhar]

They RH&D and R&E are real railways, just as much as the various narrow gauge lines or Colonel Stephens' enterprises. They go from A to B and perform revenue earning tasks in doing so. The main difference is that the owners decided to use miniature versions of main line locomotives for haulage.

[James]

The RH&DR is one of my favourites, even though I've only visited it once.

 

Oddly what first brought the railway to my attention was when the railway appeared on Rainbow when I was about three years old with Zippy on the footplate! Not long afterwards my dad bought me an Ian Allen book on the railway

[smudgeloco]

Terrific thread. Alas, I never got to ride the RH&D, but have ridden the Ratty a few times.

[Pacific231G]

"1/3 scale loco's on 1/4 scale track". That'd be the prototype for 00 then!

 

Ed

 

Definitely. I think the root of the 4mm/ft scale models on 3.5mm/ft scale track problem was that Greenly was a model engineer rather than a railway modeller so thought of 00 in terms of very small miniature railways rather than accurate scale models. Quite apart from any engineering advantages for live steam passenger carrying railways of the larger boiler and room for larger cylinders he does seem to have been influenced by simply finding the larger locomotives relative to the track more aesthetically pleasing.

 

I've only seem the Ratty in passing but the RHDR really does have the sense of a main line in miniature that Howey and Zborowski were keen to achieve.

[edcayton]

I was lucky enough to ride in the cab of River Esk all the way up the R&E when I was 12 or 13. It was just after River Mite had been built and she looked lovely in the Furness Livery. I'm feeling guilty now because I've not been back since.

In answer to the OP, I reckon that most things above 1 gauge tend to be "model engineering", gradually moving into "miniature railways" by 7 1/4" passenger carrying stuff. I don't think that the waist-high things you can ride on with your legs dangling are railways. like many on here I was a great fan of Dobwalls (a real railway), and was upset when it went.

 

Ed

[45156]

I love both the RH&D and the R&ER and have long regarded both as real railways, only smaller. Both have superb standards of maintenance of the rolling stock, locos, p way, signalling, etc that the "bigger" railways could look at in envy (and that includes the national network).

 

Odd that nobody's mentioned the two Canadian Outline locos, Dr Syn and Winston Churchill on the RH&D - for some reason, these have always been my favourites.

[DavidB]

Odd that nobody's mentioned the two Canadian Outline locos, Dr Syn and Winston Churchill on the RH&D - for some reason, these have always been my favourites.

Dr Syn is right up there for me too - all the Romney locos apart from Typhoon have beautifully crisp exhausts (Typhoon's Kylchap gives it an A4-style chatter, despite the lack of a third cylinder), but Syn's taller chimney and blastpipe have given it a wonderfully loud and deep 'voice'. When you combine that with the full-size Crosby chime whistle (one of a pair that Captain Howey imported into the UK - he gave the other to a certain Nigel Gresley, who liked it so much that he went on to fit chime whistles to his A4s), you've got a winning combination.

 

I was once on a non-stop special pulled by Dr Syn at one of the galas. With just 8 coaches and an enthusiastic driver, we'd gone like the wind from New Romney towards Dymchurch, but it became clear that we were catching up the stopper in front - in an attempt to avoid spoiling the non-stop run with a signal stop, we coasted towards Dymchurch with some beautifully aromatic smoke curling back from the chimney into the front coach and the ringing of the worn coupling rods just audible over the wheel beats. We rounded the s-bend into Dymchurch with some short blasts on the whistle for the level crossing, all the while looking out for the colour light signal protecting Dymchurch station - to our dismay, it was at red, but the section ahead cleared with seconds to spare and the aspect flicked to green just as the driver was moving to put the brake in. Syn erupted with the most ear-shattering roar as he was opened up to full regulator; with the chime whistle howling a continuous warning to the crowds on the platforms, we simply blasted through the station with the rapidly accelerating wheel beats adding their own special contribution to our volcanic progress. It was a spine-tingling piece of railway theatre that made our subsequent dash across the Marsh at a scale 90mph seem almost mundane. On arrival at Hythe, I went to thank the driver - with his ears numbed by Syn's explosive performance, he couldn't hear a word that I said! Not surprisingly, I've requested the newly rebuilt Dr Syn for my next driver experience day in November - I can't wait!

 

David

[Trevellan]

I've been on the RH&DR several times and it never ceases to entertain me - probably more so than some standard gauge heritage railways. I recall a trip behind one of the American-style locos on the 1990s and its exhaust when working hard sounded like a Sulzer chattering away in a 33! I don't get down there very often, but when I do I thank heavens for people like Captain Howey and the legacy he left us.

[edcayton]

Yes, I think it is the sensation of speed. I don't know how fast they are allowed to go, but because their little wheels are whizzing round so fast the loco's sound at express speed. It is easy to forget what big loco's sound like at speed if you only have them doing 25mph on a branch/light railway.

 

Ed

 

PS just googled and found max speed is 25 on RHDR-had to be really as it could only be a light railway. As I said though, it really does feel and sound like an express.

[jonny777]

I have always loved the RHDR, ever since my first visit in 1962. I was struck immediately by the terminus at Hythe which looked just like the layout of a station I was attempting to model in my Dad's large garden shed.

 

Many years later I was married to a woman who was born in New Romney, and have made many trips on the line especially when the children were young.

 

As others have said, it is the hard working aspect, and realistic operation, of the railway that appeals to me. To my wife's surprise I would love to retire down there so that I can volunteer on the railway (but she doesn't know that last bit).

 

I dont really know why, but my favourite locos are Hercules and Samson. I think it may be the "what if..." idea of seeing a full size 4-8-2 on the main line.

 

This thread has made me want to take another trip on the line asap.

 

John

[hayfield]

 

Odd that nobody's mentioned the two Canadian Outline locos, Dr Syn and Winston Churchill on the RH&D - for some reason, these have always been my favourites.

 

I think I read whilst I was down there that Dr Syn was being run either last or this weekend as a special

[DavidB]

I think I read whilst I was down there that Dr Syn was being run either last or this weekend as a special

Fresh from the workshops and better than new in 1931 - here's a link to a recent photo of Dr Syn minus tender, but gleaming and gorgeous

 

BTW, love your avatar John - you're clearly a man of excellent taste and discernment! (I'm currently building a model of Prince in 16mm scale - the 'Old Gent' is a superb machine).

 

David

[edcayton]

My goodness. That does look something!

 

Ed