Tidal Harbour Examples?

[splodgestudios]

Hi all, 

 

Apologies if this isn’t the right forum for this, might be better suited for prototype questions, anyways. I’m currently working on a layout of Knapford Harbour from the Rev. W. Awdrys writings. 
 

I understand it’s a tidal harbour but I’m having a hard time finding examples that match.

 

Here’s a map, each square roughly 5 miles

 

 

Writings and illustrations imply that the southern quay ends in a rail serviced jetty, although later illustrations show it to have changed.

 

A little on knapford for context; 

 

The area was established in the late 1800’s after tidal gates and embankments made it possible to inhabit the area, the harbour has always been rail served. It’s otherwise a sleepy dock and railway town with the main line and branchline crossing over. The line that serves the harbour is implied to be tramway like, similar to Yarmouth and Weymouth although it sees very little in passenger traffic. The harbour after several years of disuse, mainly due to the larger Tidmouth Harbour, received a major renovation in 1955 to act as support for Tidmouth. 

Anything similar is welcome to be shared and is greatly appreciated! 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2023 by splodgestudios

[Paul H Vigor]

2 hours ago, splodgestudios said:

Hi all, 

 

Apologies if this isn’t the right forum for this, might be better suited for prototype questions, anyways. I’m currently working on a layout of Knapford Harbour from the Rev. W. Awdrys writings. 
 

I understand it’s a tidal harbour but I’m having a hard time finding examples that match.

 

Here’s a map, each square roughly 5 miles

 

 

Writings and illustrations imply that the southern quay ends in a rail serviced jetty, although later illustrations show it to have changed.

 

A little on knapford for context; 

 

The area was established in the late 1800’s after tidal gates and embankments made it possible to inhabit the area, the harbour has always been rail served. It’s otherwise a sleepy dock and railway town with the main line and branchline crossing over. The line that serves the harbour is implied to be tramway like, similar to Yarmouth and Weymouth although it sees very little in passenger traffic. The harbour after several years of disuse, mainly due to the larger  Tidmouth Harbour received a major renovation in 1955 to act as support for Tidmouth. 

Anything similar is welcome to be shared and is greatly appreciated! 

 

 

Watchet Harbour, Somerset??

[Stubby47]

Mallaig?

[Jeremy Cumberland]

Watchet is a drying harbour, which I suspect Knapford was not, at least, not the main part. Ramsey, Isle of Man might be worth looking at, as might Par, Cornwall.

 

Most harbours in Britain are tidal, except on the west coast where the tidal range is higher, so floating harbours with lock gates were built instead.

Edited May 4, 2023 by Jeremy Cumberland

[Kris]

Plymouth Millbay or Weymouth Harbour could provide large examples of this. 

[Darius43]

Newhaven in East Sussex.

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[ikcdab]

I'm not really sure what you are after here. It seems to me there are three types

1. Locked harbours where they is an entry gate so that when the tide is down water is retained.   Preston, Bridgwater and portbury are examples.

2. Tidal harbours where the water level goes up and down, but it doesn't dry.  Fishguard, Douglas etc.  Very common 

3. Drying harbours where all the water disappears at low tide. Watchet, Minehead, Lyme Regis.

 

Which one are you looking for?

 

Ian

[New Haven Neil]

Ramsey, Isle of Man - sort of makes sense!

[New Haven Neil]

Ramsey dries out, has two piers, had a railway.....and still is a working harbour.

 

[pH]

Garlieston harbour in Wigtonshire.
 

https://www.railscot.co.uk/locations/G/Garlieston_Harbour/

 

There were regular sailings from there to the Isle of Man. 
 

There were rails on the pier, but only freight was handled by rail. Passengers had to walk to the pier from the town station.

[Michael Hodgson]

Some small harbours were not rail served because the terrain was unsuitable or could not generate traffic - places like Portwenn in Doc Martin (Port Isaac).  Robin Hoods Bay had a station but it was at the top of a steep hill with the port below, so would have been inconvenient for anything more than a few crates of fish.  Chepstow has perhaps the greatest tidal range in the country but is on the river rather than the coast, and was more of a ship-building establishment than a port for general goods; again the station was up at a height (the line had to cross the Wye via Brunel's tubular bridge) but there was a steep incline to allow very heavy loads access to the shipyard sidings.  A shallower route access is needed for easy access to the quayside, so somewhere like Lossiemouth for the considerable fish traffic ran over a fairly level branch from Elgin; the water rises and falls but it doesn't dry out, and of course it's also on a river.

 

Portishead ?  WC&PR as well as GWR.

Lymington and New Holland had passenger services to the ferries.

 

 

[splodgestudios]

5 hours ago, ikcdab said:

I'm not really sure what you are after here. It seems to me there are three types

1. Locked harbours where they is an entry gate so that when the tide is down water is retained.   Preston, Bridgwater and portbury are examples.

2. Tidal harbours where the water level goes up and down, but it doesn't dry.  Fishguard, Douglas etc.  Very common 

3. Drying harbours where all the water disappears at low tide. Watchet, Minehead, Lyme Regis.

 

Which one are you looking for?

 

Ian

Thank you for the reply!

 

Its to my understanding that knapford might be a tidal or a drying harbour - the mentioned tidal gates are at the river mouth here is an excerpt from Awdrys writings 

 

“During the 1880s the Ulfstead Mining Company became interested in the minerals (lead mostly) waiting to be found on the higher ground east of the marsh; but without a firm footing they could not be either extracted or transported away. Accord- ingly they called in A. W. Dry & Co who had experience of working on drainage problems in East Anglia. A. W. Dry built embankments across the flats north and south of the river (along which the main line of railway now runs), and installed tide gates. The river was then embanked along its south eastern side, but the opposite bank was left open to provide a flood-pool for the normal river flow which could be drained off every day at low tide. It thus remained a marsh where the Elsbridge fenmen could carry on their activities as before, and since this, fortunately, was the side of the river they preferred, they offered little opposition to A. W. Dry's drainage operations on the east.
This explains why, on the map, the area west of the river is shown bare, in contrast to the development indicated on the eastern side.”

The mentioning of draining into the harbour at low tide, to me at least, greatly implies that it’s not a lock, although I don’t think it rules out drying or tidal. 
 

The kind of shipping vessels Knapford sees isn’t directly stated. The major export would be stone from the branches quarry. Being Knapford is a supplement to Tidmouth, I think the implication is that seafaring barges could be used instead of large ships. If only barges and smaller vessels are used suppose that leans towards a drying harbour? Although I’m not sure, I don’t claim to be an expert at all! 

[KeithMacdonald]

@splodgestudios - just like @ikcdab, I'm not sure what kind of harbour you want.

 

Here's a example of a small tidal harbour, that did have a railway branchline, in Totnes (GWR)

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=17.8&lat=50.42835&lon=-3.68286&layers=168&b=1

 

Or a big "all tides" harbour, like Sutton in Plymouth (shared by GWR and LSWR/Southern)

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=18.0&lat=50.36978&lon=-4.13277&layers=168&b=1

[Jeremy Cumberland]

27 minutes ago, splodgestudios said:

“During the 1880s the Ulfstead Mining Company became interested in the minerals (lead mostly) waiting to be found on the higher ground east of the marsh; but without a firm footing they could not be either extracted or transported away. Accord- ingly they called in A. W. Dry & Co who had experience of working on drainage problems in East Anglia. A. W. Dry built embankments across the flats north and south of the river (along which the main line of railway now runs), and installed tide gates. The river was then embanked along its south eastern side, but the opposite bank was left open to provide a flood-pool for the normal river flow which could be drained off every day at low tide. It thus remained a marsh where the Elsbridge fenmen could carry on their activities as before, and since this, fortunately, was the side of the river they preferred, they offered little opposition to A. W. Dry's drainage operations on the east.
This explains why, on the map, the area west of the river is shown bare, in contrast to the development indicated on the eastern side.”

Ah, a sluiced river, scouring a deep channel in the harbour (although the entrance might need to be dredged). Porthmadog might be your prototype, then, although you would need to replace the narrow gauge lines with standard gauge.

 

[splodgestudios]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Cumberland said:

Ah, a sluiced river, scouring a deep channel in the harbour (although the entrance might need to be dredged). Porthmadog might be your prototype, then, although you would need to replace the narrow gauge lines with standard gauge.

 

I think you’re on the money here! Another paragraph says such;

 

“But Knapford harbour proved a disappointment. It needed constant dredging and by 1905 the cost had become prohibitive.”

[Ramblin Rich]

Saundersfoot is another example with a sluice river running through and had a 4ft gauge coal railway.

https://rogerfarnworth.com/tag/saundersfoot/

 

[splodgestudios]

Hi All,

 

I’d like to thank everyone for sharing! I’m still looking for references so please share away! Everything has been good but not an exact match, Knapford is of course fictional so I’m not expecting one.
 

Just to summarise what this thread has helped me narrow down; Knapford is a tidal harbour, situated at the mouth of a sluiced river

Ramsey and Newhaven are the closest from what I’ve seen so far. Porthmadog is also close, but the estuary throws things off slightly, although perhaps that’s more realistic for a sluiced harbour?

Edited May 6, 2023 by splodgestudios

[phil_sutters]

Newhaven, East Sussex is not sluiced and has deep water berths for ferries and freighters. I don't know about the Edinburgh Newhaven port.

Highbridge Wharf was a harbour with a sluice at the eastern inland end, with the sluiced new cut running parallel to it. The harbour was off the Bristol Channel with very high tide variations, leaving the ships moored at the wharf high and dry for quite long periods between tides.

This is an initial stage of my much condensed interpretation of it.

 

Edited May 9, 2023 by phil_sutters