Surrey NG 1868-70

[Nearholmer]

Not sure whether this is allowed in the “prototype” subsection, but if not it can move …….

 

In 1868-1870, there was a serious proposal to build a NG railway (exact gauge unspecified) from Esher station to Cobham. There was a brief article about the proposal in The Narrow Gauge (No.280, January 2023), and the notice of intent to put a bill before Parliament in 1870 is viewable on-line. There are also quite a few snippets in local newspapers of the time, including the usual over optimistic stuff from those in favour, and a load of rubbishing arguments from those against (its mostly internet forum level of argument before the internet, including anonymous trolls). There were large estates in the area, and some owners were for, and some against, but the decisive move came when the agent acting for Queen Victoria in respect of the estate at Claremont, which she didn’t own at the time, but was effectively royal ground, and which she was very fond of, let it be known at the House of Lord’s review of the draft bill that she was agin it. It was kiboshed on the spot!

 

So ……. Let’s assume for a minute that HMQ didn't put the mockers on it, and that it got built.

 

What do we think a c5 mile long NG railway, built c1871 in then rural Surrey would have been like?
 

One of the Spooners gave evidence in favour of the line; the whole thing came just at the very moment that the Festiniog and ‘Little Wonder’ were attracting attention right across the world; and, one of the promoters said as part of the newspaper argument that it was to be built on “The Fairlie System”. The same promoter gives a somewhat garbled response to criticisms about the difficulty of transshipping goods at Esher, which I read to be talking about either containerised shipping, or possibly the use of transporters for SG wagons on NG track, so that opens up some interesting avenues.

 

My mental picture so far is of something rather Ffestiniog & Blaenau, but it comes just as double-engines we’re being proven, and only months before the first bogie coaches, and there’s nothing to say that it would have been c2ft gauge. One secondary source confidently states 3ft, but I can’t work out where they got that from, although it does fit with the vibe of the times: the work of Carl Phil; the founding of the IoMR; the things Fairlie wrote in “The Battle of the Gauges Renewed” in 1872, etc.

 

What does the RMWeb narrow gauge collective think? If we were to build a layout representing the Cobham Terminus and the Esher exchange, are we building to represent 2ft or 3ft? What sort of locomotives and rolling stock? Architecture? Can we meaningfully extrapolate from the known as it was in 1870, to the unknown form of this railway?

 

 

 

[Paul H Vigor]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Not sure whether this is allowed in the “prototype” subsection, but if not it can move …….

 

In 1868-1870, there was a serious proposal to build a NG railway (exact gauge unspecified) from Esher station to Cobham. There was a brief article about the proposal in The Narrow Gauge (No.280, January 2023), and the notice of intent to put a bill before Parliament in 1870 is viewable on-line. There are also quite a few snippets in local newspapers of the time, including the usual over optimistic stuff from those in favour, and a load of rubbishing arguments from those against (its mostly internet forum level of argument before the internet, including anonymous trolls). There were large estates in the area, and some owners were for, and some against, but the decisive move came when the agent acting for Queen Victoria in respect of the estate at Claremont, which she didn’t own at the time, but was effectively royal ground, and which she was very fond of, let it be known at the House of Lord’s review of the draft bill that she was agin it. It was kiboshed on the spot!

 

So ……. Let’s assume for a minute that HMQ didn't put the mockers on it, and that it got built.

 

What do we think a c5 mile long NG railway, built c1871 in then rural Surrey would have been like?
 

One of the Spooners gave evidence in favour of the line; the whole thing came just at the very moment that the Festiniog and ‘Little Wonder’ were attracting attention right across the world; and, one of the promoters said as part of the newspaper argument that it was to be built on “The Fairlie System”. The same promoter gives a somewhat garbled response to criticisms about the difficulty of transshipping goods at Esher, which I read to be talking about either containerised shipping, or possibly the use of transporters for SG wagons on NG track, so that opens up some interesting avenues.

 

My mental picture so far is of something rather Ffestiniog & Blaenau, but it comes just as double-engines we’re being proven, and only months before the first bogie coaches, and there’s nothing to say that it would have been c2ft gauge. One secondary source confidently states 3ft, but I can’t work out where they got that from, although it does fit with the vibe of the times: the work of Carl Phil; the founding of the IoMR; the things Fairlie wrote in “The Battle of the Gauges Renewed” in 1872, etc.

 

What does the RMWeb narrow gauge collective think? If we were to build a layout representing the Cobham Terminus and the Esher exchange, are we building to represent 2ft or 3ft? What sort of locomotives and rolling stock? Architecture? Can we meaningfully extrapolate from the known as it was in 1870, to the unknown form of this railway?

 

 

 

What would have been its traffic, to and from 1870s Cobham? I'm imaging an operation similar to the Wantage Tramway?

[Nearholmer]

The promoters seemed focused on three things:

 

- coal inwards, especially to the “big houses”, because at the time that was being carted at a high price from wharves on the Thames;

 

- agricultural produce outwards, I think what we might call “market garden crops” which Surrey specialised in, to markets in Kingston and London; and, 

 

- passenger traffic.

 

It would doubtless have attracted things like beer, manufactured foodstuffs, flour, block ice for butchers (which the Wantage Tramway carried), some building materials, and all the sorts of manufactured goods and “parcels” that any town grew to demand.

 

So, I think the Wantage Tramway is no bad approximation, although I wonder whether this one might have grown straggly tentacles to serve some of the estates.

 

I guess a railway connection would have helped the place grow, and given how close it is to London I imagine it would have speeded-up “suburbanisation” in a way that didn’t much happen at Wantage until very recently.

 

I also think that, in the long run, those who opposed it on grounds of ‘break of gauge’ would have been proven right. Wantage worked because wagons could easily, and therefore cheaply, be passed to and fro, whereas this one would have been saddled with transshipment costs. It would have taken a blow once a SG line came to the district, and probably died altogether once there was a ‘bus service. The Wolverton and Stony Stratford Tramway, another short line, had a huge commuter traffic, but even that couldn’t survive buses.

[Nearholmer]

Here’s the place as it stood in 1878:

 

[Nearholmer]

Here’s a definition of “The Fairlie System”, from The Times in early 1870:

 

“…,the Fairlie system of railway

working—a system by which lines of

the lightest construction and very narrow

gauge may accomplish work hitherto

deemed within the means only of lines

of ponderous construction and broad

gauge…..”

 

In other articles of about the same date, Fairlie is strongly advocating 3ft gauge, while boasting that he can make jolly good engines for c2ft, so I’m inclined to go with 3ft for this one.

 

Something else that Fairlie was up to at the time was developing and demonstrating his bogie steam carriage, a contraption that was a bit like a bogie compartment coach articulated to a vertical-boiler tram engine, so an early steam rail-motor. Now, that sounds just the thing to zip up and down a five mile line, providing connections with trains to and from Waterloo, much as the Wantage used the Grantham Steam Car.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Nearholmer

[burgundy]

J C Craven resigned from the LB&SCR in 1870 and undertook work as a consulting engineer. I am sure that his involvement would have livened up the choice of locomotives for the line.

Best wishes 

Eric 

[Nearholmer]

I reckon the word was out, and even a some optimistic railway promoters in a Surrey backwater would have known better than to seek his advice.

Edited August 31, 2023 by Nearholmer

[burgundy]

Somewhere in gestation, there is an article to give a little balance to the Hamilton Ellis image of Craven. He was undoubtedly a difficult personality, he put up with a lot from a locomotive committee that bought locos without telling him and he had quite a decent career after leaving the Brighton.  

Best wishes 

Eric 

[Nearholmer]

Lacking a key skill of a senior railway officer, the ability to ‘manage upwards’?

[009 micro modeller]

On 30/08/2023 at 18:16, Nearholmer said:

or possibly the use of transporters for SG wagons on NG track, so that opens up some interesting avenues.

Had the technology for transporters (presumably either Calthrop-style or as used on the Continent as it would have been ‘narrow on wide’, so not like the Padarn etc.) been looked at and developed in the 1860s? Later experience with these would imply a gauge of at least 2’ 6”.

 

I note that the current Cobham standard gauge station hadn’t opened at this stage, so there presumably wouldn’t have been a particular desire for a main line connection at or near that end, only at Esher.

 

On 30/08/2023 at 18:16, Nearholmer said:

My mental picture so far is of something rather Ffestiniog & Blaenau, but it comes just as double-engines we’re being proven, and only months before the first bogie coaches, and there’s nothing to say that it would have been c2ft gauge. One secondary source confidently states 3ft, but I can’t work out where they got that from, although it does fit with the vibe of the times: the work of Carl Phil; the founding of the IoMR; the things Fairlie wrote in “The Battle of the Gauges Renewed” in 1872, etc.

Having not been to that particular area for a while, I can’t remember how hilly it is - a Ffestiniog-like gradient profile would probably favour 2’ gauge but otherwise I would have said 3’ (or possibly even 3’ 6”?). 

[Nearholmer]

I don’t think SG on NG transporters had been deployed at that time, and the wording implies that the person writing didn’t properly understand what he was describing. It was one of the promotors, trying to convey what Fairlie had proposed to him, so it’s all a bit confused and confusing. Fairlie was a radical thinker though, so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he envisaged SG on NG transporters at this stage.

 

It’s not exactly alpine in that area, more rolling hills, so I’m sure 2ft gauge wouldn’t have been necessary, and TBH I can’t see that NG would have saved all that much money compared with a lightly constructed SG line.

 

Edited August 31, 2023 by Nearholmer