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Not only does peat burn, but under the right conditions milled peat (the fine crumbly stuff) will spontaneously combust. Bird na Mona in Eire used to have a few fire-fighting trains on the bog railways for that very reason.

Not only does peat burn, but under the right conditions milled peat (the fine crumbly stuff) will spontaneously combust. Bird na Mona in Eire used to have a few fire-fighting trains on the bog railways for that very reason.

Edited by Nearholmer
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What a pity CA is a little too late:

From Wikipedia:

In United Kingdom, the Locomotive Acts, was a policy requiring self-propelled vehicles to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag or carrying a lantern to warn bystanders of the vehicle's approach. In particular The Locomotive Act 1865, also known as Red Flag Act, stated:

Firstly, at least three persons shall be employed to drive or conduct such locomotive, and if more than two waggons or carriages he attached thereto, an additional person shall be employed, who shall take charge of such waggons or carriages; Secondly, one of such persons, while any locomotive is in motion, shall precede such locomotive on foot by not less than sixty yards, and shall carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn the riders and drivers of horses of the approach of such locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same,

The Red Flag Law was repealed in 1896, by which time the internal combustion engine was well into its infancy.

I didn't know that in addition to being concerned with safety it was also a job creation scheme.

Methinks they should bring the Act back.

Jonathan

PS I don't drive

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But the leek and manifold never went to leek (or anywhere else which might vaguely be described as more than a hamlet).

 

Down with Leek, up with Hulme End!

 

With Pendent mode on it did actually run to Leek.

 

The Leek and Manifold light railway was a combined standard gauge line that ran from Leek to Waterhouses and a narrow gauge line that ran from Waterhouses to Hulme End.

It is a common misconception that the Leek & Manifold was just the narrow gauge section.

Edited by Argos
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i once had a nest in a heather bed I had built out of peat blocks and tried the same method, forgetting that peat burns!  (No jokes about anyone called Peter Burns, please.) And yes, I got stung too!!

...

 

Jim

I remember Pete Burns, he used to have a temporary job at Probe Records before he hit the big time.....

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Gosh, it's easy to miss stuff on this topic!

 

This post might need a boost because these links deserve re-posting; this is fascinating stuff (and dangerously on topic!)

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Not only does peat burn, but under the right conditions milled peat (the fine crumbly stuff) will spontaneously combust. Bird na Mona in Eire used to have a few fire-fighting trains on the bog railways for that very reason.

 

And when Bulleid went to CIE, he developed a peat burning locomotive, the CC1, which was not followed up.  It shared superficial similarities with the Leader...

 

At least it used peat in a block form, with auger mechanical stokers, so there was little chance of spontaneous combustion!

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CI%C3%89_No._CC1

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Hroth,

 

Remaining OT ..... that was a major contributor to it not being a great success.

 

Peat burns best in its milled form, where there is a very high surface area contact with oxygen. Peat fueling of generating stations progressed from 'machine cut turf' to milled peat at or about the same time as Bulleid's loco work, for that very reason. IIRC there was only one peat briquette-making plant in Eire when the loco was built, so the fuel must have come from that.

 

The loco was a grand experiment, really, rather than a 'Bulleid Folly' as is often assumed, to see whether native fuel could be used for transport, the lack of coal and oil having been a really, really serious issue during the early 1940s. They had to resort to a quasi-military campaign to dig peat, and even ripped the roofs off of passenger coaches to provide enough "wagons" with which to transport it into Dublin.

 

A loco is about the worst place to get energy out of peat, though, if they'd had the capital it would probably have been better to burn it in generating stations and electrify the railway. As it was, they dieselised earlier than in the UK, although I've never quite worked out how they raised the foreign exchange to do it. Marshall Aid may have come into it.

 

For those not familiar with 'turf', it is nothing like lawn-turf. It is cut from the bog at about the constituency of blancmange, but quickly dries to have a leathery skin, then to be as hard as softwood, and about as dense as heavy pine.

 

Kevin

Edited by Nearholmer
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But the leek and manifold never went to leek (or anywhere else which might vaguely be described as more than a hamlet).

 

Well, not without a change of gauge.

Unless you were a lump of coal, of course, in which case even the change of gauge meant not changing trains!

;)

Down with Leek, up with Hulme End!

Isn’t Hu(l)me End an embarrassing problem that philosophers suffer from, when they think too much?
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The L&MVLR (railway 4 on the LRO) was always kept legally separate and indeed was financed separately and differently from the standard gauge connections (railways 1-3 on the LRO). However they were all passed on the same light railway order (leek, caldon low and Harrington light railways). Part of the opposition to the LRO was the argument that the NSR were essentially using the need for the connection to the light railway up the valley in order to get their extension to caldon low quarry (which the NSR leased) built and approved on the cheap. Which isn't a million miles wide of the mark, as the various legalities were set up so that the NSR owned and paid for the bits it really wanted, but others paid for and owned the L&MVLR and the NSR agreed to work it for a hefty percentage of its revenues, but they turned down or offered very low amounts when given chances to buy the L&MVLR. At one point relationships were so friendly that the NSR withdrew the passes for the L&MVLR directors so they had to pay to travel on their own line!

 

The narrow and standard gauge bits only came under the same ownership at grouping.

 

Scheming persons, strange legal ownership structures, arbitrary acts of pettiness, the conflict between those trying to serve the public and those just trying to run their railway as a business aren't just things we think of when making up our own histories...

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No, they never offered a value the L&MVLR considered acceptable (begrudgingly saying they didn't really want it but they'd offer £15k when the railway wanted at least double that), not that the LMS did either (they were asked for £100k!), but the compensation at grouping wasn't really negotiable - I think there was a committee working out compensation if companies couldn't come to an agreement, memory suggests they ended up with a touch over the £15k after all that maybe £17k or something?

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(...)

 

Well, then, you've only yourself to blame.

 

Mind you, time spent re-designing Derwent is, of course, permissible

 

(...)

I'm sorry to report that the former comment is perhaps a little unfair - There were a multitude of factors preventing my being here anything like regularly enough to keep up!

 

And I'm unsure whether the latter is a sarcastic comment or a gentle nudge!

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I'm sorry to report that the former comment is perhaps a little unfair - There were a multitude of factors preventing my being here anything like regularly enough to keep up!

 

And I'm unsure whether the latter is a sarcastic comment or a gentle nudge!

 

Sem,

 

Good to see you posting here again.

 

Of course, here is only love and light and freedom from defect, so I would not have you unnecessarily concerned!

 

So,

 

Comment #1: Gently tongue-in-cheek 

 

Comment #2:  Gentle kick up the Khyber!

post-25673-0-22009100-1538122427_thumb.jpg

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And the toast is:

 

Levity, Jollity and Mirth!

 

Ok, dull stuff.  A while ago, we had a discussion on power tools for modellers.  More recently Aldi offered a Rotary Tool (Stop sniggering at the back there!) almost exactly two months ago.

 

https://www.aldi.co.uk/workzone-170w-rotary-tool-set/p/077349148737100

 

At the shop price of £15 its not bad, and Aldi charge £3 for delivery from their website, unless you can find something else there to hoik the price just over £20, when delivery is free!

 

I'm only mentioning it because the local Aldi had some at a reduced price of £13.  As can be seen from the online pic, its a robust device, with a storage bag and various bits and bobs for immediate use.  So if anyone needs something like that, it might be a good idea to have a browse through your local!

Edited by Hroth
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I had a feeling my comment would lead to a higher level of pedantry......:-)

I'm afraid I reread the Gratton book over the summer.

Like I said though, the amount of twisty shenanigans and separation between parts of what was promoted as a single system is instructive in planning our own fictional networks. To me it looks like the NSR never wanted the risks/liabilities of the line up the valley (unless it paid off, in which case they'd get the revenue anyway) but they knew they wouldn't get their line in to the quarry unless on the same ticket.

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Wife's best friend from 'Cevendish Gremer Skool fer Gels', Bexton ( chairman of Governors the Duke of Devonshire) was the landlord's daughter of the Light Railway Hotel, Hulme End - actually in Staffordshire as were a lot of Buxton's 'scholar'.catchment area, including also the Cheshire highlands..

They went to Coventry Training College togerher (now Warwick Univ), by which time best friend's family ran the Wetton Mill tea rooms  - in the right background of Hamilton Ellis's carriage painting above.

I used to go potholing around the Manifold area with a friend on a tandem and tea at Wetton Mill was a good reviver before a hard pedal home.

The friend now lves near Waterfall - a good motorway stop for lunch with Leek oatcakes (her brother-in-law, now a shepherd, used to work on the Cromford line at Friden, though I find his yarns very difficult to understand).

dh

Edited by runs as required
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