South Wales in 1960s in N

[TomJ]

I've just googled some pictures of Dowlais Central. I feel cold and damp just looking at them!! I think bleak is rather an understatement!

[br2975]

There is bleak, and there is bleak........at least Dowlais Central and Dowlais Cae Harris were alongside 'civilisation'

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Dowlais Top on the other hand.........................

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http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/Images_D-H/Dowlais_DowlaisTopStation__23_8_1961.JPG

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Brian R

[br2975]

Welcome to what is still considered one of the remotest valleys in the South Wales coalfield, the Afan Valley, and Cymmer Afan.

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At one time a service ran from Swansea/neath to Treherbert via the Rhondda tunnel, but was later altered to run between Bridgend-Maesteg-Cymmer Afan-Treherbert using both Derby suburban units and 'bubble cars' as seen here.

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When B.R. allegedly found the tunnel to be in a dangerous condition the service was cut back to Bridgend-Maesteg-Cymmer Afan with the remainder becoming a bus service.

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The passenger service survived until 1970, solely due to a schools contract.

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Looking at the image in the attachment, the 'bubble car' will soon return to Bridgend, veering off to the left.

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The line going straight ahead was the former line to Neath / Swansea, but by now had been cut back and only ran from Cymmer Afan to Duffryn Rhondda washery, about a mile down the valley.

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Coal was brought down the valley from Avon Colliery for washing at Duffryn Rhondda, then brought back here to Cymmer and eventually moved away to Tondu and Bridgend again, by veering off to the left through Cymmer tunnel.

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For a couple of years a solitary MGR train ran from Duffryn Rhondda washery to Aberthaw Power Station, the hoppers stabling to the left in this image.

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A few times a day, the 'bubble car' arrived from the Bridgend direction, then reversed down to Duffryn Rhondda Washery providing an unadvertised miners train, at shift change times.

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By 1971, all this was but a memory.

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But sadly, it's not a terminus. 

 

https://www.rcts.org.uk/features/mysteryphotos/show.htm?srch=Glyncorrwg&img=Y-35-35A&serial=3

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Brian R

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[The Johnster]

What is fortunately not a memory is the station's privately run licensed Buffet, the 'Refresh', still in business for the benefit of the locals and the mountain bikers and worth a visit for the railway photos on its walls.  

 

The mental seed for Cwmdimbath was planted here on a very wet afternoon in 1969 on the way back from Maesteg NCB.  The low cloud made it all look like a big grey room...

[chrisf]

Coryton was originally a through station, on the Cardiff Raliway's double track main line to Treforest continuing towards the next station, Tongwynlais, through a cutting.  Having been prevented from using the junction by an injunction so that it became an unjunction by the opposition of the Taff Vale, the Cardiff introduced a steam railmotor passenger service to Rhiwderin, south of Pontypridd, and the line never carried it's intended level of traffic and became a white elephant; the GW took one look at the passenger figures and pulled the plug at Coryton.   Much of the route can be traced although a good bit has been obliterated by road developments, especially the largest roundabout in Europe, the Coryton interchange, and the route of the A470.  

 

 

 

Methinks you mean Rhydyfelin.

 

Chris

[TomJ]

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I’m going to set the layout in the Afan Valley area. I know it well from when MrsJ and I went mountain biking at Afan Forest. I think we may have been to the Refreshment Rooms at Cymmer. Only knowing it from the mid 90s and I can’t imagine how it looked it the heyday of mining.

 

Using this area as inspiration I can base my layout on Abergwynfi as an almost terminus (I’ll modelled the tracks somehow continuing beyond the station. I had never realised so few of the stations were termini and I’d never heard of the Rhondda tunnel. I think it just shows how important the coal traffic once was that they could consider digging a huge tunnel through a mountain to get a quicker route to the docks.

 

The plan is coming together so next I shall start on some of the buildings and think about buying some timber.

[The Johnster]

Methinks you mean Rhydyfelin.

 

Chris

 

Oh, sh^t, another senior moment.  Yes, Rhydyfelin.

[The Johnster]

Scenery was very different back in the 60s; mountainsides were mostly bare because the trees had long ago been cut for pitprops.  My formidable clay pipe smoking great aunt Nell, whose parents had been brought over from County Cork in the potato famine and was 101 when she died in 1963, lived in Tonypandy all her life and could remember when 'a squirrel could go from Pontypridd to Blaenrhondda without touching the ground'; there were no trees to speak of when I used to visit with the family in my childhood (I was 11 in 1963).  By the time you went mountain biking in the Afan Forest, most of these bare mountainsides had been replanted by the Forestry Commission. 

 

Pitprops were imported from Scandinavia, Russia, and Canada, and there were big depots at Marshfield between Newport and Cardiff, and at Lletty Brongu near Bridgend.  They were taken to the collieries, after a suitable period of seasoning, in 5 plank opens.

 

The skylines were dominated by the coal spoil tips, black cones that drew the eye and were connected to the collieries by 'the buckets', cable cars carrying the spoil out the mountain.  These squeaked and clanked constantly while the coal was being screened, and the silence when they stopped seemed all the more profound because you'd tuned the noise out of your awareness.  The whole look was much more bare and bleak.  Then as now, sheep got everywhere they shouldn't, and your model should have a few of them about the place, on the railway as well as beside it, on the platform, and even in village streets.

Edited June 8, 2018 by The Johnster

[br2975]

.............................. especially the largest roundabout in Europe, the Coryton interchange, and the route of the A470.  

 

I would wager the M25 is the largest 'roundabout' in Europe !

[The Johnster]

I would wager the M25 is the largest 'roundabout' in Europe !

 

No, being pedantic it is a road, with a number, not a junction.  But, also to be pedantic and in a spirit of fairness, J32 is a gyratory system, not a true rouadabout.  It is a dead mile if you drive around it in the right hand, innermost, lane.

[The Stationmaster]

No, being pedantic it is a road, with a number, not a junction.  But, also to be pedantic and in a spirit of fairness, J32 is a gyratory system, not a true rouadabout.  It is a dead mile if you drive around it in the right hand, innermost, lane.

 

Not much fun either by the look of it as you can only go round in one direction - clockwise.  The real fun ones are like this where you can go round in either direction (or both should you happen to want to change direction part way round).  As a past irregular user of the lower one - The Magic Roundabout (yes, that really is its official name) - it was often quicker to go round it anti-clojkkwuise depending on your exact route, I've only been round the upper one in a clockwise direction.

 

 

 

 

Now back to South Wales and the Afan Valley is a good choice and it was of course allegedly the place on which the old BBC TV comedy series 'Davy Jones' Locker' (about a rather scurrilous Signalman) was based - Blaengwynfi was one of those places which has a reputation for 'interesting goings on' such as the story of the Stationmaster and the lady Booking Clerk.

[Harlequin]

I know the Magic Roundabout in Hemel very well! I wonder how they managed to take a photo in daylight with no traffic at all on it? Computer magic, I guess, because that's extremely unlikely to ever happen in reality!

 

(North west is the road to Xara headquarters.)

Edited June 8, 2018 by Harlequin

[TomJ]

I grew up in Bracknell. As a result there will be NO roundabouts anywhere on the layout! And having spent two years driving down to Cardiff to visit MrsJ I do not have fond memories of the Coryton Interchange!

 

I’ve now pretty much googled every image of ‘South Wales Colliery Railways’ I can - loads of inspiration. Are there any books on the railways anyone can recommend?

 

One of my real interests is modelling the buildings and I find myself strangely drawn to industrial locations in bleak or rural locations. Hence my earlier layout based on the china clay works in Cornwall. So if I ever extend I would love the challenge of building a small colliery itself. This is what I’m struggling finding photos that explain the general layout of the buildings/shafts/headstock/screens etc. Can anyone point me in the right direction of some general drawings explaining it?

 

Thanks everyone - there’s no way I’d have got anywhere near this far with the planning without all your input

Edited June 9, 2018 by TomJ

[The Stationmaster]

I grew up in Bracknell. As a result there will be NO roundabouts anywhere on the layout! And having spent two years driving down to Cardiff to visit MrsJ I do not have fond memories of the Coryton Interchange!

 

I’ve now pretty much googled every image of ‘South Wales Colliery Railways’ I can - loads of inspiration. Are there any books on the railways anyone can recommend?

 

One of my real interests is modelling the buildings and I find myself strangely drawn to industrial locations in bleak or rural locations. Hence my earlier layout based on the china clay works in Cornwall. So if I ever extend I would love the challenge of building a small colliery itself. This is what I’m struggling finding photos that explain the general layout of the buildings/shafts/headstock/screens etc. Can anyone point me in the right direction of some general drawings explaining it?

 

Thanks everyone - there’s no way I’d have got anywhere near this far with the planning without all your input

 

Plenty of books but I think you'll have a problem getting hold of them as most of the really good 'photo album' style books with excellent captions are out of print - 

 

'Rickard's Record' by Brian J Miller using Sidney Rickard's photos, 3 volumes published by The Wider View - really top notch stuff

Various volumes, now well over-oriced in my opinion from Middleton Press generally good photos and useful S map extracts but the captions can be a bit flaky.

Some of the volumes in the 'Steam In South Wales' series by Michael Hale using his own photos with good captioning, originally published by OPC with the final vo,ume published by the Welsh Railways Circle.  Great if you can find them, the first volume was published in 1980!

Silver Link published a series about the TVR and another about the RR and they are quite nice, well illustrated, but smaller, format books.

 

I would avoid 'Rails In The Valleys' by Michael Page published by David & Charles unless you can find it going very cheaply as the photographic reproduction is poor and it is not profusely illustrated.

[The Johnster]

Colliery layouts varied according to the shape and size of the site that they had to squeeze into. but the basics were the pithead, from which coal emerged from the very bowels of the earth in drams, narrow gauge tub wagons pushed along by hand at the surface, then tipped into the screens, where the spoil was separated out and sent up the mountain in the buckets, and where the coal was graded into different sizes, followed by the washery, where it was loaded into the railway wagons and washed to remove the dust, which was fairly unceremoniously dumped into the local river in a way which would not be allowed nowadays.  So, you need storage sidings for empty wagons waiting to be shunted into the washery or loadeds awatiing clearance, and the sidings serving the washery itself at the minimum. 

 

There also needs to be a weighbridge, so that the correct amount of tonnage can be charged by the railway, and, if a loco is provided and the BR engine doesn't do all the shunting, it needs a road for a shed and an inspection/ash pit, and some sort of water supply.

 

The colliery also needs an engine house for the winding engine, and a boiler house for supplying that and any other ancillary needs with steam, and a pumphouse to keep the galleries underground dry, and a fan house to keep them ventilated.  By your period, there would be pithead baths and a canteen as well.  Even a small colliery is a fairly complex and very mechanised place; sometimes the coal is transported between processes by belt, so there needs to be a dynamo and a building for that as well.  Some of the larger sites were seriously major industrial complexes, with entire internal railway systems and major loco facilities on a par with the main line, and everything was filthy and, especially at the washery end of the place, soaking wet!  The ground was rutted, soft, black, and muddy, except in high summer when everything was dusty.  

 

Mining is a speculative industry driven by the desire for high profits and low outlay, and even buildings that had been there for a century looked temporary and ramshackle in many cases, but this was not a universal law; modern show pits such as Hafodyrynys tended to feature very permanent looking but magnificently grim reinforced concrete structures that looked capable of withstanding a 20 megaton direct hit.  Even above ground, they were very unpleasant places to work in; below ground required a fully heroic approach to life!

Edited June 9, 2018 by The Johnster

[TomJ]

That all seems a bit big to me.

Might stick to the exchange sidings!

[Northroader]

If you like bleak, I’d put Cwmbargoed as the place to be. It was on the line up to Dowlais, but was at the summit, and higher than Dowlais. On miners working conditions, they’d all come up to the surface looking grey from head to toe, but the place I was curious about was Crynant, on the N & B line up the Dulais valley. It was the only pit I saw where they used to come to the surface wearing oilskins.

[The Johnster]

That all seems a bit big to me.

Might stick to the exchange sidings!

 

It's what most of us do.  I have gone one stage further and not modelled even that; my colliery is a few hundred yards the wrong side of the scenic break, but all mineral traffic, loadeds and empties, has to come up to the terminus to run around and run the van around.  This is because the colliery ground frame is on a viciously steep gradient, and the brake van has to be trailing for all workings on it by the authority of a Sectional Appendix instruction.  This also affects shunting at Cwmdimbath itself; no move can be made in to the section with the loco at the uphill end of a rake, unless it can be secured with automatic brakes or is a single freight brake van.

 

But some of the facilities of a small colliery can be incorporated into even quite a small layout, especially in N of course.  

[TomJ]

Googling the Mountain Ash system I’ve come across the loading point for Penrikyber Colliery. If I’ve got it right it seems like that was a loading point and the coal was transferred by conveyer from the colliery across the river. If that’s correct then a loading hopper might fit quite well. Photos of it seem hard to come by

[Fat Controller]

Whatever else you do, please don't put the 'magazine' (store for explosives) anywhere near the shafts and associated head-gear. Note also that I said shafts; there would be one with headgear to allow access/egress for personnel. The second would provide a passage for air for ventilation, as well as sometimes allowing a route for coal to be brought to the surface.