County Council Tramway microlayout

[Dunalastair]

Back to a more railwaylike scene for this morning's 'diorama a day'. Perhaps. I live on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Fen, now part of Cambridgeshire. Early in the twentieth century records describe an unlikely proposal by the then County Council to build a narrow gauge tramway out into the fen to develop smallholdings on public land in the recently drained area. That the tramway was never constructed was no obstacle to my using it as the basis of a microlayout, trialling radio control using electronics taken from cheap RC toys. Using 'dead rail' allowed old Tri-ang 16.5mm gauge track to be used without worrying about electrical continuity.

 

Representing an 18" gauge tramway on 16.5mm made for a large scale of 1:27 which made the layout feel like a Britains farm toy setup - especially when I started 3D printing animals and birds. Printing makes choice of scale much more flexible. 

 

I may have overdone the fen / agricultural features. These include the pumping engine house, the leaning power pole, the pollarded tree, the cart hovel with the roof timbers visible, the bank alongside the lode (a fen waterway) and the grazing geese.

 

 

In a view from the other end, bins of pumpkins and swedes are being filled by barrow, having been unloaded from tramway wagons. These are wooden beads from a craft supplier. Using peat to represent ballasted track on a peat fen had a certain resonance.

 

 

Wildfowl are an ever-present feature of the fen, even today. Back in the day, fowlers used gun punts (with enormous punt guns) to approach these understandably flighty birds. Also visible is a coypu (a species since eradicated from the fen as they damaged the banks) and a Chinese water deer (a more recent arrival in the area). I'm not sure if the coypu and the water deer ever overlapped. Reeds on this economy-build came from nylon brush bristles from the pound shop, some growing and some cut for thatch, with PVA 'water'. Water lily leaves came from my hole punch. 

 

 

Inside the engine house a working beam engine was installed. Here are the printed pieces before installation, a little wobbly as not yet fixed down. From left to right there is a boiler, cylinder and beam, flywheel and scoop wheel. Motion is provided my a motor gearbox between flywheel and scoop wheel. Although the beam towers over the figures, this engine is a tiddler. More than a hundred such steam engines once operated on the fen, with coal delivered by fen lighters. Several survive, and a visit to the Stretham Engine museum gives an insight into a way of life lost when first diesel then electric pumps displaced steam, which had itself replaced wind pumps.  Clicking the image should hopefully make the video run. 

 

 

Although there was more scope for operation on this microlayout than with most of my projects, the reality is that the interest for me came from the build rather than running. The buildings have now been boxed up and the board sits in a corner, waiting for me to pluck up courage to strip it for future projects. Unless anybody else would like to take it on?

 

Edited July 17, 2023 by Dunalastair

[cctransuk]

55 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

Back to a more railwaylike scene for this morning's 'diorama a day'. Perhaps. I live on the edge of the Huntingdonshire Fen, now part of Cambridgeshire. Early in the twentieth century records describe an unlikely proposal by the then County Council to build a narrow gauge tramway out into the fen to develop smallholdings on public land in the recently drained area. That the tramway was never constructed was no obstacle to my using it as the basis of a microlayout, trialling radio control using electronics taken from cheap RC toys. Using 'dead rail' allowed old Tri-ang 16.5mm gauge track to be used without worrying about electrical continuity.

 

Representing an 18" gauge tramway on 16.5mm made for a large scale of 1:27 which made the layout feel like a Britains farm toy setup - especially when I started 3D printing animals and birds. Printing makes choice of scale much more flexible. 

 

I may have overdone the fen / agricultural features. These include the pumping engine house, the leaning power pole, the pollarded tree, the cart hovel with the roof timbers visible, the bank alongside the lode (a fen waterway) and the grazing geese.

 

 

In a view from the other end, bins of pumpkins and swedes are being filled by barrow, having been unloaded from tramway wagons. These are wooden beads from a craft supplier. Using peat to represent ballasted track on a peat fen had a certain resonance.

 

 

Wildfowl are an ever-present feature of the fen, even today. Back in the day, fowlers used gun punts (with enormous punt guns) to approach these understandably flighty birds. Also visible is a coypu (a species since eradicated from the fen as they damaged the banks) and a Chinese water deer (a more recent arrival in the area). I'm not sure if the coypu and the water deer ever overlapped. Reeds on this economy-build came from nylon brush bristles from the pound shop, some growing and some cut for thatch, with PVA 'water'. Water lily leaves came from my hole punch. 

 

 

Inside the engine house a working beam engine was installed. Here are the printed pieces before installation, a little wobbly as not yet fixed down. From left to right there is a boiler, cylinder and beam, flywheel and scoop wheel. Motion is provided my a motor gearbox between flywheel and scoop wheel. Although the beam towers over the figures, this engine is a tiddler. More than a hundred such steam engines once operated on the fen, with coal delivered by fen lighters. Several survive, and a visit to the Stretham Engine museum gives an insight into a way of life lost when first diesel then electric pumps displaced steam, which had itself replaced wind pumps.  Clicking the image should hopefully make the video run. 

 

 

Although there was more scope for operation on this microlayout than with most of my projects, the reality is that the interest for me came from the build rather than running. The buildings have now been boxed up and the board sits in a corner, waiting for me to pluck up courage to strip it for future projects. Unless anybody else would like to take it on?

 

 

I think that your inspiration was the unbuilt Oakington & Cottenham Light Railway; the Deposited Plans for which are with the County Records collection. I traced the plans back in the 1970s / 80s.

 

The line would have commenced at Oakington Station and proceeded via the road verge to Cottenham; thence straight up the centre of Cottenham High Street, to terminate at the side of Cottenham Lode, near the church. There would have been a branch from the centre of the village to the brickworks.

 

I built a small diorama of a loco shed, using Tri-ang TT track and loco mechanisms, plus some stock using Tri-ang bogies and wagon underframes.

 

Somewhere, I have a few photos and the plan tracing - I'll see if I can find them.

 

John Isherwood.

[Dunalastair]

6 minutes ago, cctransuk said:

 

I think that your inspiration was the unbuilt Oakington & Cottenham Light Railway; the Deposited Plans for which are with the County Records collection. I traced the plans back in the 1970s / 80s.

 

The line would have commenced at Oakington Station and proceeded via the road verge to Cottenham; thence straight up the centre of Cottenham High Street, to terminate at the side of Cottenham Lode, near the church. There would have been a branch from the centre of the village to the brickworks.

 

I built a small diorama of a loco shed, using Tri-ang TT track and loco mechanisms, plus some stock using Tri-ang bogies and wagon underframes.

 

Somewhere, I have a few photos and the plan tracing - I'll see if I can find them.

 

 

Yes, the Cottenham proposal is also of interest, but the Huntingdonshire proposal was much further north, at Yaxley, near Peterborough.

 

I have myself been looking again at the Cottenham Light Railway Order recently, thinking about a possible perspective diorama. The proposed 2'6" gauge was the same as the short lived Alford & Sutton and the line might have had similarities. A while ago, I mocked up this montage of a ghostly A&S train in Cottenham.

 

 

It would be good to see your model!

[Dunalastair]

I managed to track down my original reference to the tramway.

 

The IRS 'Industrial Locomotives of East Anglia' describes a proposal from Huntingdonshire County Council to the Norman [Cross] Brick Company "to join with them to provide [a] light railway on roadside to convey bricks and serve small-holdings" (Contract Journal 1/1/1919). " It is presumed that the line would have run to Yaxley & Farcet station. Norman Cross brickworks already had NG tramways from their clay pits. 24" gauge WDLR equipment would have been available at the time, by contrast to my 18" gauge model.

[cctransuk]

3 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

I think that your inspiration was the unbuilt Oakington & Cottenham Light Railway; the Deposited Plans for which are with the County Records collection. I traced the plans back in the 1970s / 80s.

 

The line would have commenced at Oakington Station and proceeded via the road verge to Cottenham; thence straight up the centre of Cottenham High Street, to terminate at the side of Cottenham Lode, near the church. There would have been a branch from the centre of the village to the brickworks.

 

I built a small diorama of a loco shed, using Tri-ang TT track and loco mechanisms, plus some stock using Tri-ang bogies and wagon underframes.

 

Somewhere, I have a few photos and the plan tracing - I'll see if I can find them.

 

John Isherwood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plenty of stock built, and three buildings, but that's as far as it got in 1977!

 

John Isherwood.

Edited July 17, 2023 by cctransuk

[Dunalastair]

Thankyou for the images. Interesting to see that you went for the Glyn Valley approach of skirted locos. I guess we'll never know what the promoters had in mind! It is a chastening thought that 1977 is probably closer to the likely closure date of the railway, had it been built, than it is to today ...  

[cctransuk]

1 minute ago, Dunalastair said:

Thankyou for the images. Interesting to see that you went for the Glyn Valley approach of skirted locos. I guess we'll never know what the promoters had in mind! It is a chastening thought that 1977 is probably closer to the likely closure date of the railway, had it been built, than it is to today ...  

 

Not so much Glyn Valley as Wisbech and Upwell - being located on verges and down the High Street, covered motion would have been mandatory.

 

As most of us know, Thomas came to the attention of the Law for this reason, necessitating the acquisition of Toby!

 

John Isherwood.

[Nearholmer]

Fascinating stuff.

 

These lines might have been worked from the outset by internal combustion locos, which would have largely overcome the ‘exposed motion’ problem. The Rye & Camber was originally envisaged as i.c. powered, but it seems that there wasn’t quite enough faith in the new technology at that moment, but by the dates in question here it was certainly practical.

[Dunalastair]

The 1901 Cottenham LRO has this as clause 12:

 

"The railway shall be constructed on a gauge of two feet six inches or such other gauge as may from time to time be determined by the Company with the consent of the Board of Trade and the motive power shall be steam".

 

Perhaps just a little too early to consider including IC. Interesting that electric traction was not included as an option. It was the narrow gauge which made me think Chirk rather than Upwell. If Oakington had been SG, then that would have allowed fruit wagons to work through to the Histon jam factory. John's transporter wagon is a neat way around that given that there were no overbridges or tunnels to worry about, unlike the Manifold. Chivers used NG tramways for their chicory plant out on the fen near Shippea Hill (see e.g. https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php with the industry layer turned on) so a jam factory branch would not be altogether implausible.

 

I went for a run this morning at Holme Fen NNR, not far from the proposed site of the County Council tramway. I wonder which smallholdings might have been connected and how far into the fen? I somehow imagine it as operating like the Lüttmoorsiel-Nordstrandischmoor island railway where households each have their own rolling stock.

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

2 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

Perhaps just a little too

….. conservative in outlook ..,,,

 

3 minutes ago, Dunalastair said:

to consider including IC

Very disappointing!

[Dunalastair]

Yet the good Colonel S seemed to have no issue introducing IC on other lines. I don't suppose that he asked the BoT - provided the local council did not object then the mandarins (and Col Marandin) could stay in blissful ignorance - at least until there was an accident ...

Edited July 17, 2023 by Dunalastair

[Nearholmer]

More enlightened County Councils were at it in 1902.

 

LCC line from Deptford Wharf to the Foreign Cattle market.

 

An i.c. Loco had been tried on the street tramway nearby nearly a decade earlier too.

 

[wainwright1]

The Grove Street Tramway from the Deptford Wharf Branch to the Foreign Cattle Market was operated by the Corporation of London (City of London), not the LCC. You can see their logos on the side of the loco.

I did have a builders picture of the loco when new, unfortunately lost when my computer crashed earlier in the year. Hopefully, I have a print somewhere that I can scan in again.

The vans were also owned by them, I think that there were only four, as seen in the picture.

 

The trackwork from the Dockyard was altered twice to ease the curves for the vehicles.

The motive power started off as horse, then petrol and finally steam, although an 08 was tried briefly towards the end, but not found satisfactory.

 

All the best

Ray

[Nearholmer]

I  should have got the right authority.

 

Somewhere, I think possibly in a motoring magazine, but maybe in Engineering or The Engineer, there is quite a detailed account of the testing of the loco, with more photos. I seem to recall that the tests involved loading the vans with paving slabs to get the required weight.

 

The big mystery, to me at least, is what happened to the loco. It was almost certainly outclassed by increased loads during WW1, which I think was when the connection was rearranged to permit bigger locos, quicker throughput etc, but what happened to it then, I’ve never been able to fathom.

 

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Dunalastair]

Many councils / corporations had electric traction through their tramway departments, but Cardiff, by dint of having acquired the Glamorganshire Canal in order to close it, ended up operating a battery loco over the SG canal railway.

 

"Cardiff Corporation battery loco on Glamorganshire canal railway"

https://www.flickr.com/photos/taffytank/51829146329

 

[SteveyDee68]

On 17/07/2023 at 15:38, Nearholmer said:

More enlightened County Councils were at it in 1902.

 

LCC line from Deptford Wharf to the Foreign Cattle market.

 

An i.c. Loco had been tried on the street tramway nearby nearly a decade earlier too.

 

Well, there’s a subject for all the 3D print/resin casting sellers to have a go at! And the side skirts mean they can select whatever small chassis takes their fancy! (Just not black beetle power units, okay? You listening at the back?! Good!)

 

HOURS OF WISHFUL THINKING

[cctransuk]

8 hours ago, SteveyDee68 said:

Well, there’s a subject for all the 3D print/resin casting sellers to have a go at! And the side skirts mean they can select whatever small chassis takes their fancy! (Just not black beetle power units, okay? You listening at the back?! Good!)

 

HOURS OF WISHFUL THINKING

 

What's wrong with Black Beetles - they're still available from the manufacturer in Australia?

 

Greatly to be preferred to Tenshedo 'rockets'!

 

CJI.

[SteveyDee68]

8 hours ago, cctransuk said:

 

What's wrong with Black Beetles - they're still available from the manufacturer in Australia?

 

Greatly to be preferred to Tenshedo 'rockets'!

 

CJI

I may have got my reference wrong - I know that one type has got a pocket-rocket reputation!!

 

Steve S

[Dunalastair]

I have just created a new thread to describe my diorama of a NG tram in Cottenham.

 

 

Strictly static, and very small, so no need to choose between 16.5mm gauge mechs.