Footrail diorama

[Dunalastair]

A footrail was a small, generally independent coal drift in Staffordshire, of which there were once many, some operating till the end of the twentieth century. A rope-worked narrow gauge track provided the railway interest. One site, at Apedale, is now a preservation site - this is how it looked when in operation. Such industrial sites were rarely tidy!

 

 

The Industrial Railway Society publishes a series of books by A J Booth on similar drift mines, both footrails and further afield. Footrails were collieries, but a wide range of minerals were extracted using such drifts.

 

 

https://irsshop.co.uk/British-Small-Mines-North

 

After a forty year modelling layoff, but before I caught the 3D printing bug, I built a small 4mm scale narrow gauge mining / quarrying layout as a (re)learning exercise. The layout itself was not to a standard I would like to record now, and it has since been broken up. However, one of the final developments was to include a footrail cameo, set in the mid twentieth century. I did preserve the footrail for a while after the main layout was scrapped, so at that point the cameo became a diorama, but the photograph below shows it in its original incarnation.

 

 

In those pre-printing days, the track was (I think) Auhagen feldbahn, the tub bodies were cut down hiliter pens and the portakabin was a card kit. A few years later and I can see how a new version of this scene could be much improved, but hopefully this simple treatment might provide an idea of the potential of such industrial sites.

 

Edited July 9, 2023 by Dunalastair

[Ralf]

Super stuff, and right up my street of interest. What happens to the tubs once they're hauled out and unloaded? 

 

Keep up the efforts! 

Ralf

 

[Dunalastair]

7 hours ago, Ralf said:

 

What happens to the tubs once they're hauled out and unloaded?

 

 

Thankyou for the kind words. In the version I have modelled in static form, a rake of tubs would have been hauled up full by the electric winder. Tubs would have been individually emptied in the side tippler and manually pushed beyond until all were empty. The rake would then have been recoupled and lowered back down the drift on the rope. Underground, tubs would have been moved to and from the working face(s) by men, ponies or battery loco(s).  

 

There are videos on Youtube of such surface operations, some in the UK but more in places like China and Taiwan. For example

 

In smaller operations, such as some in South Wales and the Forest of Dean, tubs would have been hauled out individually and manually tipped over. In larger collieries, gravity was used to move tubs on the surface, running tubs down into an end-tipping tippler, before they ran back into an empties road. 

 

Operation was not limited to full and empty coal tubs. Materials such as pit props were taken into the drift, sometimes on a second 'road' which thereby formed a ventilation circuit. Battery electric locos which worked underground might be brought out for charging or servicing. And although most miners would have walked, manrider trains were not unknown. 

 

I planned and started a microlayout using a motor/gearbox winder, having scoped the wagon weights and gradients needed to make it work, but never got any further than laying out 9mm gauge points and track on a foam board. 

[009 micro modeller]

All very interesting, I especially like how you’ve modelled the steep gradient up the incline and then the raised section the tubs are standing on. I have a small mines book too (I think mine might be the ‘south’ volume though but from the same series) and it’s filled with inspiration for small dioramas and micro layouts, including one with a conveyor belt and a very short incline only used for materials handling.

 

 I hope you don’t mind the thread drift but I did have a go some years ago at something a bit like this in 009. It started as a project to build a moving toy and the wagon actually winds up and down. It has less than 30 scale feet of track.

 

[Dunalastair]

12 hours ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

 I hope you don’t mind the thread drift but I did have a go some years ago at something a bit like this in 009. It started as a project to build a moving toy and the wagon actually winds up and down. It has less than 30 scale feet of track.

 

 

 

 

Yes, the 'free miner' tradition in the Forest kept such small mines and their cable tramways working until very recent years. 

 

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/meet-last-miners-uk-including-4311311

 

I don't know if any still extract coal today, as opposed to operating as tourist attractions. I certainly remember seeing such mines there and indeed in the South Wales valleys twenty years or so ago. There also used to be seasonal mines worked by farmers in the North Pennines in the same timeframe - I wonder if any of those are still worked. Squaring elaborate regulations intended for deep mining with such small drift mines must be difficult.

 

I like your model, especially the crank mechanism - thankyou for sharing it.

[009 micro modeller]

26 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

 

 

Yes, the 'free miner' tradition in the Forest kept such small mines and their cable tramways working until very recent years. 

 

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/meet-last-miners-uk-including-4311311

 

I don't know if any still extract coal today, as opposed to operating as tourist attractions. I certainly remember seeing such mines there and indeed in the South Wales valleys twenty years or so ago. There also used to be seasonal mines worked by farmers in the North Pennines in the same timeframe - I wonder if any of those are still worked. Squaring elaborate regulations intended for deep mining with such small drift mines must be difficult.

 

I like your model, especially the crank mechanism - thankyou for sharing it.

Thank you. The crank mechanism was part of the basic design, but rather than using it to activate a cam mechanism etc. mine is basically a winch. I did attempt a backscene but it didn’t fit in that well.

 

One major piece of inspiration was this video: 

 

 

I wanted a rectangular-bodied, inside framed mine wagon and have had a few attempts at making one but the Minitrains U-skip is much more free-running, which is important for a gravity-worked line.

 

Inspired by the sites in the books mentioned, I’d like to have another go at some point, perhaps with a slightly larger scenic area and maybe in 09 rather than 009. Not sure whether to go with a hand-powered winder again though or whether to have an electric one on a timer.