Ironstone Quarry Layout

[scalerailmodelling]

Hi all hopefully this is in the right place, I am building a 009 Ironstone Quarry layout set roughly in the 1930s, with  bit of wiggle room either side, though I have a Corgi Ruston excavator so that'll tie it down to 1937+ I think.

 

My question is what is prototypical between the line running alongside the quarry face or the line ending at the quarry face and then train going back the way it came? (its a small company so I thought about the possibility of them extending the track as and when they needed to)

 

you can see the difference in the below photos, the rail in the large black and white one seems to end there and have a single track, the colour photo has the train going past an excavator (though not sure its in use) and the smaller black and white photo also shows a train passing where the ore is being excavated.

 

any help would be much appreciated, its not based on a specific line but its supposed to be around Northamptonshire if that helps  

 

  

Edited July 9, 2021 by 7s26
Spelling

[Paul H Vigor]

Northamptonshire iron ore quarries were never very deep - more like a substantial trench that advanced across the landscape? The working face to the fore and the overburden dumped to the rear. The railway would have advanced with the working face. The Midlands iron ore railways I am familiar with resembled German feldbahns - they were generally surface lines that tended to follow field boundaries.  Some lovely B&W photos in 'Narrow Gauge Charm of Yesterday', by Ivo Peters.

[Compound2632]

I can recommend I.P. Peaty, Mountsorrel and its associated quarry railways (Irwell Press, 2012). Although most of the railways described were standard gauge, it's full of atmospheric photos.

[eastglosmog]

You need to get copies of the 9 books in E.J Tonks' set "The ironstone Quarries of the Midlands"."Two foot gauge rails to the ironstone" by Paul Ingham, ISBN 0 9538763 0 6 (softback) or 09538763 1 4 (hardback) also has many illustrations of narrow gauge ironstone railways in Oxfordshire, which were basically similar to those elsewhere in the Midlands.  For a small outfit as you describe, what was between the ironstone face and the rails were a lot of men hacking at the rock face with picks and loading the wagons using forks (so as only the coarse material goes into the wagon).  Once the face had moved back further than the wagons could be conveniently loaded, the rails would be slewed over.

[Paul H Vigor]

https://www.nir.org.uk/history

[Davexoc]

If you can get here  https://www.irchesterrailwaymuseum.co.uk/  when it reopens, it is well worth a look.

And if youv'e got children/grandchildren, they will like the rest of the country park too......

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by Davexoc
Photo restored

[scalerailmodelling]

On 10/07/2021 at 22:13, Davexoc said:

If you can get here  https://www.irchesterrailwaymuseum.co.uk/  when it reopens, it is well worth a look.

And if youv'e got children/grandchildren, they will like the rest of the country park too......

 

Great thank you, I’ll bear it in mind