Fenwick Pit: a North East Colliery in 2mm

[Caley Jim]

Just been looking through the maps of the area on the NLS website and it's not until that 1956 survey you posted that these sidings appear on the Church Pit branch.  I can't see them being needed for a shot works, so that makes me think they must be exchange sidings for East Holywell.  What the two buildings were for I've no idea.

 

Yes, do your own thing!  It's for enjoyment and relaxation after all!

 

Jim

[Trewisin]

Hi Richard ,nice to see you are back in it as they say.The map you posted in the last page(12) shows where my grand-parents.

lived right under the ( Map Key symbol)

rgds Ray.

[Geordie Exile]

I've spent the last two months in the loft, adding 100mm of insulation to every surface!  Another couple of weeks, and it might be ready to be considered my train room.

 

 

And I know I was warned against covering the hatch, but this is temporary, and the chances of me having a medical emergency and collapsing on the boarding are FAR outweighed by the chance of me stepping back to admire my work and seriously delaying any more!  I'll build a guard rail eventually.  Honest.

 

[Geordie Exile]

And I am still modelling.  I'm now the proud owner of a re-wheeled Class 24, and two Class 108 DMUs.  The first 108 was dutifully run in for an hour each way.  A couple of days ago, I popped it on the track and it made an unpleasant crunching sound, and one of the teeth has disappeared from a driving wheel.  Fortunately the Association replacements are already ordered, and they're made of sterner stuff.

[Geordie Exile]

For anyone wondering how difficult it is to re-wheel a 108: absolute piece of cake. The most difficult part was having the courage to wrench the motor bogie out of the chassis. It takes a damn good tug.

 

If you're doing it for the first time, a couple of thoughts:

- Watch the delicate parts. Today's models have a lot more detail than when I was playing with N Gauge in the early eighties*.

- You'll need to bend out the electrical pickups before putting in the replacement wheelsets. They can be gently squeezed behind the wheels as you click the wheels in.

- Test each pair of wheels for electrical contact.

 

*Yeah, I need to glue a bit back on. Ho hum.

[nick_bastable]

No need to remove the bogie just the frame

[Geordie Exile]

11 minutes ago, nick_bastable said:

No need to remove the bogie just the frame

I found the only way to pop the frame was from above.  I'm now wondering whether I could have done that from below...

[nick_bastable]

frame unclips from the bottom end to end still we all live and learn and I need to learn lots

[Geordie Exile]

I love the internet.  (Well, some bits of it.)  I've been staring at the OS map trying to figure out how Fenwick pit connected to the Backworth system, the North-South running Blyth & Tyne, and the North Tyne Loop of the NER that served - and continues to serve - North Tyneside.  And I stumbled across this:

I've rotated it 90 degrees and shown it alongside the nearest OS map to the same time that I can find.  I'm trying to work out why the Church Colliery lines are shown as dashed: were they lifted at the time the map was drawn?  They're almost certainly what became the exchange sidings for the Backworth System and show as "Mineral Railway" on the east of OS Map.  I'm similarly confused by the solid lines which appear to have two catch points, then become dashed.  I can't see them on the OS Map, and I'm not aware of anything more than two roads heading North-South at Earsdon Junction. 

 

The OS Map is labelled as "NZ37SW - A, Surveyed / Revised: 1953 to 1964, Published: 1966", so the dates of the two are remarkably close.

 

Any thoughts from folk who understand all this?  Either way, this is quite a leap forward in producing a track plan for me.

 

 

 

[Curlew]

A guess is that dashed means single track on the OS map, but lifted on the track plan sketch. OS maps were not always fully updated when reprinted so what is drawn on the map may sometimes be many years out of date.

Edited April 22 by Curlew
typo

[65179]

50 minutes ago, Geordie Exile said:

I love the internet.  (Well, some bits of it.)  I've been staring at the OS map trying to figure out how Fenwick pit connected to the Backworth system, the North-South running Blyth & Tyne, and the North Tyne Loop of the NER that served - and continues to serve - North Tyneside.  And I stumbled across this:

I've rotated it 90 degrees and shown it alongside the nearest OS map to the same time that I can find.  I'm trying to work out why the Church Colliery lines are shown as dashed: were they lifted at the time the map was drawn?  They're almost certainly what became the exchange sidings for the Backworth System and show as "Mineral Railway" on the east of OS Map.  I'm similarly confused by the solid lines which appear to have two catch points, then become dashed.  I can't see them on the OS Map, and I'm not aware of anything more than two roads heading North-South at Earsdon Junction. 

 

The OS Map is labelled as "NZ37SW - A, Surveyed / Revised: 1953 to 1964, Published: 1966", so the dates of the two are remarkably close.

 

Any thoughts from folk who understand all this?  Either way, this is quite a leap forward in producing a track plan for me.

 

 

 

 

I think the signalling diagram is a bit of a composite representing the later situation once the Hartley Mains trackbed was just used as sidings, but still indicating the previous layout when the Mains were in place.

 

 

Sassaby image from Flickr showing the situation in 1973, and with some explanation in the text.

 

Edit to add the four track situation:

 

 and the Mains being lifted in 1961:

 

(Both copyright Alan Brooks, North Tyneside Steam Flickr images).

 

Regards,

Simon

Edited April 22 by 65179

[Curlew]

See here for a larger scale map, if you are not already aware....

 

View map: Ordnance Survey, Northumberland (New Series) LXXXVI.11 (Seaton Valley; Tynemouth; Whitley And Monkseaton) - Ordnance Survey 25 inch England and Wales, 1841-1952 (nls.uk)

 

https://maps.nls.uk/view/132279656

 

 

Edited April 22 by Curlew

[Geordie Exile]

@Curlew Thanks Simon - that's incredibly useful. I've trawled through Sassaby's albums on Flickr and somehow hadn't spotted that one (although my focus was on Fenwick Pit itself at the time).  Don't think I'd found the North Tyneside Steam Railway album, so there's another great source.

 

That square crossing is going to be fun replicating!

 

Richard

 

[Geordie Exile]

I'm currently in the North East and have taken a couple of hours to walk the wagonways leading from Fenwick Pit. The exchange sidings have mostly disappeared under modern roads and housing. This is line from the colliery and shows what I'm wrestling with in terms of baseboard design.

 

 

We tend to start on something flat, and build scenery up, but this line 'floats' on an embankment almost all the way from the colliery to the sidings with most of the landscape ten or fifteen feet below it. I want to somehow replicate this, with the trackbed on a skeletal 'baseboard' sitting above the actual baseboard.  But of course this presents challenges such as running wire-in-tube, and TOUs underneath the turnouts but above the baseboard, and all the access issues that raises.  

 

I'm looking forward to Derby which no doubt will give me lots of pointers.

Edited Friday at 10:55 by Geordie Exile

[bécasse]

Faced with a similar problem (albeit in HOe rather than 2FS), I borrowed an idea from Tortoise point motors and had the basic point operating system at a low level and then transferred the actual normal-reverse movement to the point blades by means of a vertical lever pivoted approximately at its mid point. In fact I took a further leaf out of Tortoise's book by making the lever from suitably stiff spring wire with the pivot just a hole in a piece of horizontally mounted brass (the hole needs to be just a tad greater diameter than the wire to allow movement but not excess movement). The system works brilliantly and is remarkably easy to make and set up, the most difficult task is choosing a piece of wire with the right stiffness for the vertical distance.