Moretonhampstead branch and Teign Valley Line

[Rivercider]

The Wray Valley trail skirts around the west side of the former station site at Moretonhampstead, with views of the former loco shed. Thompsons Haulage who have occupied the site for decades seemed to be pulling out last time I was there.

 

The loco shed viewed from the public footpath on the west side of the site. 5/2/2015

 

The loco shed viewed from the gateway of Thompsons Haulage, looking south 19/5/2021

 

The former goods shed is now shorn of the more recent additions - is it listed and to be kept while the site is re-developed?

 

Moretonhampstead goods shed 19/5/2021

 

 

cheers

 

  

[KeithMacdonald]

Next stop on the Teign Valley Line : Ashton Station.

 

Because of the way the line was opened in sections at different times (Heathfield to Ashton in 1882, and to Exeter in 1903), for a while Ashton was a terminus. That might explain why of all the stations on the line, this is the only one with an engine shed. The line was extended from Ashton to Trusham a year later in 1883, well before the section to Exeter opened in 1903. But the engine shed remained at Ashton, not Trusham, which was the terminus for 20 years. Ashton also had two sidings and a crane.

 

 

I guess this picture is from the north end of the station. What's the building on the left?  Looks too small to be a goods shed.

 

Ashton on Geograph

 

 

Quote

View northward, towards Christow and Exeter: ex-GWR Teign Valley line (Exeter - Christow - Heathfield - Newton Abbot). The station was closed on cessation of the passenger service 9/6/58, goods 2/3/59. The houses and garden have obviously been built more recently, incorporating some of the station.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3239939

© Copyright Ben Brooksbank and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

 

400 yards north of Ashton Station was yet another quarry with its own siding (for a while). This was Ryecroft Quarry.

 

 

There were plans in 2003 to reopen it, but locals objected.

 

Quote

Plans to re-open an old quarry on the edge of Dartmoor have been rejected by Devon County Councillors. An inspector's report had recommended that Ryecroft Quarry near Christow be brought into use again after more than 50 years. But at a meeting on Wednesday councillors decided they did not agree.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3077234.stm

Edited November 13, 2022 by KeithMacdonald

[KeithMacdonald]

23 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

The former goods shed is now shorn of the more recent additions - is it listed and to be kept while the site is re-developed?

 

Good question. 🙂

The developer's website says:

 

Quote

The development is well known for its history. Originally, the Moretonhampstead railway station, Hingston View, was a thriving terminal for those wanting to explore the wonders of Dartmoor. In order to keep some of the industrial heritage, the old railway goods shed and part of the station’s platform will be converted and restored as part of Hingston View. 

 

https://www.bakerestatesltd.co.uk/development/moretonhampstead-devon

 

But I can't see it listed as a dwelling on their website.

[Harlequin]

50 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

Nearer to Moretonhampstead along the track bed is another replacement footbridge.

 

Looking north towards Moretonhampstead 19/11/2019

 

Alongside the footpath just south of Moretonhampstead is a long concrete beam, which I believe to be a former signal post. Not knowing the signalling here it might be the down distant or perhaps the up starter?

Metal fixings on the concrete post beside the footpath, 19/11/2019

 

cheers

 

 

Great find! Yes, that looks like the Home signal post, which was indeed concrete. Amazing that it's still there and to think how many people must walk past it without realising what it is.

 

I'm going to have to get down there for a walk!

 

[Compound2632]

36 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Now that's an entertaining layout, with the engine-shed siding reached via a crossover from the loop, with a plain crossing on the running line, and then on a kick-back too. It would turn a few heads as an exhibition layout!

 

What was shedded there?

[KeithMacdonald]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

What was shedded there?

 

I wish I knew the answer. Disused Station only teases us:

 

Quote

Notes: Ashton was the only station on the line to have its own engine shed. It was brick built, of gable style with timber trusses under a slate roof and was 56ft 8in in length and 17ft wide. One locomotive was allocated to the shed initially but after July 1903 there were two. It was closed in 1908 and demolished in 1960. The station was located on the west side of the track.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/a/ashton/index.shtml

[Cowley 47521]

1 hour ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Next stop on the Teign Valley Line : Ashton Station.

 

Because of the way the line was opened in sections at different times (Heathfield to Ashton in 1882, and to Exeter in 1903), for a while Ashton was a terminus. That might explain why of all the stations on the line, this is the only one with an engine shed. The line was extended from Ashton to Trusham a year later in 1883, well before the section to Exeter opened in 1903. But the engine shed remained at Ashton, not Trusham, which was the terminus for 20 years. Ashton also had two sidings and a crane.

 

 

I guess this picture is from the north end of the station. What's the building on the left?  Looks too small to be a goods shed.

 

Ashton on Geograph

 

 

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3239939

© Copyright Ben Brooksbank and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

 

400 yards north of Ashton Station was yet another quarry with its own siding (for a while). This was Ryecroft Quarry.

 

 

There were plans in 2003 to reopen it, but locals objected.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3077234.stm

The recent photo shown above is actually of Christow not Ashton Keith.

It’s taken from the bridge over the line.

[Rivercider]

52 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Now that's an entertaining layout, with the engine-shed siding reached via a crossover from the loop, with a plain crossing on the running line, and then on a kick-back too. It would turn a few heads as an exhibition layout!

 

What was shedded there?

Lawrence Pomroy's book The Heathfield to Exeter (Teign Valley) Railway, he mentions the eariest trains were worked by 'a single engine with side tanks worked several six-wheeled coaches five times a day'. 

Later 517 class 0-4-2Ts were used, in 1901 the shed at Ashton was recorded as having No. 540 allocated. Speculating this was the engine that worked the first train.

 

cheers

 

cheers

[KeithMacdonald]

Christow Station

 

While Christow was a terminus of the line from Heathfield, the station was called Teign House, and the long siding for loading stone was called Teign House Siding.

 

Here's the 1905 plan

 

 

Here's a 1920's picture.

 

 

In the distance is a wooden gantry crossing the sidings, with a conveyor from the large buiilding (top centre). Here's a picture from beyond it, looking back. The wagons look much like the "Teign Valley Granite" wagons we saw earlier, but these have the modest slogans : "Scatter  Rock Macadams ~ Christow ~ Proprietors of the toughest stone on record". Presumably being loaded from the overhead gantry and a conveyor from the large building.

 

 

 

 

The SRS diagram for 1943 shows quite a few changes including four new sidings, in a curiously symmetrical arrangement.

https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/html/gwe/S890.htm

 

Here's a track plan updated to include their approximate locations.

 

 

Disused Stations offers explanations:

 

Quote

 

Two sidings were added behind the down platform in 1914 for Scatter Rock Quarry traffic and a 3/4 mile siding curved sharply away to the Bridford Quarry of the Devon Bassalt and Granite Company in use between 1910 - 1931. The Bridford Barytes Mine also used the railway at Christow conveying Barium Sulphate to Exeter for milling; this traffic ceased in July 1958. The down loop was extended northwards by 370 yards in 1943 as part of the upgrading of the route for diverted trains. Although officially closed to freight traffic on 1.5.1961, the station could not be used by rail bourne traffic after 30.9.1960 after the line was cut by floods.

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/c/christow/index.shtml

 

 

Bridford Barytes Mine

https://www.mindat.org/loc-32190.html

 

Christow railway station (view North)

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3389085

© Copyright Richard Green and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

 

Christow station (looking South)

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3389947

© Copyright Richard Green and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

[pb_devon]

And Christow Station is home to the Exeter & Teign Valley Railway heritage centre https://www.teignrail.co.uk

[Cowley 47521]

24 minutes ago, pb_devon said:

And Christow Station is home to the Exeter & Teign Valley Railway heritage centre https://www.teignrail.co.uk

Quite an interesting collection of things Colin has built up there over the years. I was pleased to see the little shunter that worked at Exmouth Junction coal concentration depot parked up near where the footpath crosses the site a couple of weeks ago:

 

 

@KeithMacdonald - Great thread sir!

[Compound2632]

9 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

I suppose the Scatter Rock Quarry will have acquired its wagons in 1914, with the opening of its sidings. That fits, as the wagons are pre-1923 RCH specification types - although there is of course no reason why the firm could not have acquired second-hand pre-1923 wagons after 1923. The natural assumption would be that this photo was taken when the sidings and wagons were new but if that is the case, one has to account from the LBSC wagon. After the Great War, its presence would be no surprise, with pooling, but if the photo is from 1914, it would suggest that the firm had a contract to supply roadstone to a customer in Surrey or Sussex. However, I was initially puzzled by the wagon to its left. At first I thought the initials might be LMS, putting the date firmly post-1922, but the S seems too small and slightly too high on the wagon side. After a bit of headscratching, and rejecting the Great North of Scotland, which did letter its wagons GNS but in characters larger than those used by the LMS, I've realised it is probably a North Staffordshire wagon, with what I at first thought was the top of the M, obscured by something in the foreground, is in fact the Staffordshire knot. Now could the quarry be loading for customers but in Surrey and in Staffs? Or is this a post-war photo after all?

[JohnR]

This is such a great thread. I've always wanted to model the line, inspired by this "Plan of the Month" from Railway Modeller in 1983. I suspect the incline might be a bit much!

 

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Now could the quarry be loading for customers but in Surrey and in Staffs? Or is this a post-war photo after all?

I'm definitely not an expert on pre-common user days, but I offer the following thoughts:

How did the wagons get there? It seems unlikely that both have arrived loaded at a very small country station at the same time, but they are together in the line being loaded, rather than in random positions, which suggests that they may have arrived together.

Even if it is post-WW1, the common user agreements were between railway companies - they did not, so far as I know, permit third parties to use railway vehicles without specific agreement from the owner of the wagon(s). If the PO user was short of wagons, there were plenty of wagon hire companies available.

It was not unknown for customers who owned wagons to send them empty to collect loads for that customer, as it was cheaper for them. So, are these wagons sent to collect materials for the railway companies involved or their grouped successors, which are together as they arrived empty that way from Hackney yard? 

 

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

I suppose the Scatter Rock Quarry will have acquired its wagons in 1914, with the opening of its sidings. That fits, as the wagons are pre-1923 RCH specification types - although there is of course no reason why the firm could not have acquired second-hand pre-1923 wagons after 1923.

 

This page at the Teign Valley History Centre might help with the dating?

 

Quote

although the company was formed in 1911 production was not begun until 1914, by which time a direct link between quarry and railway line was in place. This was the overhead ropeway which relied on gravity – the weight of the full buckets travelling down to the station pulling the empties back up (though it was later found necessary to install an auxiliary electric motor to counteract friction). Built by the German firm Bleighert it ran for just over a mile from the crushers, above the road from Christow to Bridford at the point where it meets the brook, and into the far side of Christow Station

 

https://tvhistorycentre.org/geology8.php

 

Also, some later activity of interest:

 

Quote

the 1939-45 war was a great stimulus to demand, the stone being used for airfields and other military installations. (20-Min-Bri-Pho-00265)This brought an exotic flavour to life in Christow, and an even noisier one. As well as the sound of blasting and the creaking of the ropeway the village air now sounded to the double-declutching and grinding of gears as US army GIs drove some of the stone directly away from the quarry in 6-wheeler Chevrolet trucks, a one-way system being instituted in the village to aid the flow of traffic. Here as elsewhere locals were taken aback at the racial segregation evident in the American forces.

 

That last sentence reminded me of articles I've seen elsewhere

e.g. Launceston

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2020/06/18/the-battle-of-launceston-how-racial-tensions-among-gis-in-great-britain-during-ww2-led-to-armed-confrontation/

and the Battle of Bamber Bridge

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/the-battle-of-bamber-bridge.html

 

Mention of Chevrolet trucks also reminds me:-

A schoolfriend of mine was from a farming family near Teignmouth. One time c.1970 I was helping at harvest time and my friend was showing me round their equipment, some of it quite ancient. They still had a 6-wheel Chevrolet truck in use on the farm. My friend's father had (cough) "bought it home" in 1945 after the GIs departed.

[KeithMacdonald]

3 hours ago, JohnR said:

This is such a great thread. I've always wanted to model the line, inspired by this "Plan of the Month" from Railway Modeller in 1983. I suspect the incline might be a bit much!

 

 

Is the incline needed?

 

Oh, here's a couple of RTR wagons to get you started:

 

Hornby R6168C Teign Valley Granite 

 

Hornby R6526 Scatter Rock

 

[Ramblin Rich]

45 minutes ago, KeithMacdonald said:

 

Is the incline needed?

.....

Interesting thread this!

It looks like the plan includes hidden areas under Moretonhamptead going from a-a. Therefore the line from Heathfield has to rise to Moretonhamptead and probably also fall to 'a' to get height clearance. This looks like one of those 'ambitious' Modeller plans that look good on paper but would be difficult in reality. That central space is a bit tight too!

 

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Cwmtwrch said:

I'm definitely not an expert on pre-common user days, but I offer the following thoughts:

How did the wagons get there? It seems unlikely that both have arrived loaded at a very small country station at the same time, but they are together in the line being loaded, rather than in random positions, which suggests that they may have arrived together.

Even if it is post-WW1, the common user agreements were between railway companies - they did not, so far as I know, permit third parties to use railway vehicles without specific agreement from the owner of the wagon(s). If the PO user was short of wagons, there were plenty of wagon hire companies available.

It was not unknown for customers who owned wagons to send them empty to collect loads for that customer, as it was cheaper for them. So, are these wagons sent to collect materials for the railway companies involved or their grouped successors, which are together as they arrived empty that way from Hackney yard? 

 

If we were discussing a colliery, I'd feel on firmer ground.* Suppose a coal merchant had a contract with a colliery. The colliery would load a consignment to the merchant either in the colliery company's PO wagons, the merchant's PO wagons, or railway company wagons, or a mix of the three. The charging regime would be different in each case. I suppose the same situation would apply for a customer having a contract with a quarry company, with the exception that the customer would be most unlikely to have their own PO wagons. 

 

Now, the general question you have raised, which applies to coal traffic just as much as to stone traffic, is, how would the railway company supply wagons? In the case of a major coal mining district, I would suppose from empty stock on hand at the nearest marshalling yard. I don't think railway company wagons would be "in circuit" between the merchant and the colliery, though obviously the merchant's own PO wagons would be. (My evidence for this is a mineral register from Skipton that I have been looking at. This records numerous collieries supplying numerous merchants but each merchant is chiefly getting his coal from a particular colliery. Over five months in the late 1890s, I have noted over 450 railway company wagons (all Midland) of which only three have appeared twice and none more frequently than that.) What seems unlikely, to me, is that if a merchant and the colliery with which he was dealing knew that between them they would have insufficient PO wagons for the quantity of coal on order, empty railway company wagons would be dispatched from the merchant's home station to the colliery.

 

Now, it may be that other mineral traffic such as limestone and roadstone was handled differently. The North Staffordshire had a fleet of stone wagons that were used for quarry traffic originating on its own lines; I don't know whether any of the quarries on its system also had there own PO wagons.

 

This is one of those questions the answer to which was so obvious at the time that no-one thought it worth recording!

 

*Subsidence notwithstanding!

Edited November 14, 2022 by Compound2632

[JohnR]

20 minutes ago, Ramblin Rich said:

Interesting thread this!

It looks like the plan includes hidden areas under Moretonhamptead going from a-a. Therefore the line from Heathfield has to rise to Moretonhamptead and probably also fall to 'a' to get height clearance. This looks like one of those 'ambitious' Modeller plans that look good on paper but would be difficult in reality. That central space is a bit tight too!

 

 

I had a quick play with AnyRail, and I cant get that pointwork at the junction to work with regular Peco track, most curves are 2nd and 3rd radius, rather than the 2' or 2'6" quoted in the text. 

 

And as for that incline..... I think I made it roughly 1 in 14....

[Cwmtwrch]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

What seems unlikely, to me, is that if a merchant and the colliery with which he was dealing knew that between them they would have insufficient PO wagons for the quantity of coal on order, empty railway company wagons would be dispatched from the merchant's home station to the colliery.

I agree. Skipton was an MR station, so logically either the MR was the actual customer, collecting its own coal, or there was an agreement with the local colliery companies to supply wagons. My thought was that here the NSR and the LBSCR were the actual customers, and sent their wagons for loading, in the same way as railways sent their loco coal wagons to whichever colliery they were being supplied from, which might not be on their own system.

[Compound2632]

Just now, Cwmtwrch said:

I agree. Skipton was an MR station, so logically either the MR was the actual customer, collecting its own coal, or there was an agreement with the local colliery companies to supply wagons. My thought was that here the NSR and the LBSCR were the actual customers, and sent their wagons for loading, in the same way as railways sent their loco coal wagons to whichever colliery they were being supplied from, which might not be on their own system.

 

I'm afraid you misunderstand what I was saying about Skipton - the Midland was not the customer, the local coal merchants were. The Midland simply supplied haulage for PO wagons, also supplying its own wagons where required, and siding space for the coal merchants to unload.

[Rivercider]

I have visited the site at Christow station a couple of times. I also met and had a chat to Colin the passionate owner of the site. He once worked in the Exeter Area Freight Centre and knew my dad quite well as he often called into the office there.

 

Here are some photos from October 2011.

 

 

 

 

The former Exmouth Junction coal concentration depot shunter was also present.

 

D2269 Perseus at Christow 14/10/2011.

 

The Facebook group 'Teign Valley Railway' has some more information about the line, Colin is a member of the group.

 

cheers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Rivercider]

A few more photos of the site at Christow  taken back in 2011.

 

Looking south towards the station 14/10/2011

 

Another view looking south 14/10/2011

 

The rebuilt cattle dock can be seen in the right background. 14/10/2011

 

 

The concrete storage bins for the stone from Scatter Rock quarry can be seen in the background. 14/10/2011

 

cheers

 

 

[Rivercider]

On a more recent visit to Christow there was building work taking place on the station buildings, now a private dwelling.

 

Christow station looking north towards Exeter 5/7/2017

 

 

The down platform at Christow looking north, 5/7/2017

 

The station front at Christow 5/7/2017

 

cheers

[Rivercider]

Some narrow gauge equipment at Christow,

 

 

57/2017

 

Also nearby in the trees there is a footbridge over the Teign, some old narrow gauge track has been re-used,

 

 

5/7/2017

 

cheers