Creating a light railway backstory?

[whart57]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

That is really interesting and I wonder how many others there were where electrification was specifically authorised/empowered by the LRO (other than the ones that were really Street tramways but built with light railway legislation).

 

A couple of lines on the fringes of the Black Country are in that grey area between a light railway and a street tramway. One is the Kidderminster and Stourport, which connected those two towns. It ran as a street tramway within the towns but in between it ran over a reserved track beside the road. Today Kidderminster and Stourport have virtually merged but a hundred years ago it was open countryside in between. Had the K&S followed up on the proposals to build a line to Bewdley that would have been even more interesting. The Bewdley line was authorised under an LRO, unlike the main K&S which had an Act of Parliament, and was authorised to carry goods, minerals, parcels and animals as well as passengers

 

The other one is the Kinver Light Railway.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

1 hour ago, Tom Burnham said:

There was the Portmadoc, Beddgelert and South Snowdon Railway, which was intended to be electrified, and in fact several locomotives were built by Bruce Peebles & Co (a Ganz licensee) but never delivered.  I believe some of those behind the scheme were also involved with (hydro) electricity supply in North Wales and with the Dolgarrog aluminium smelter.

The PBSSR (and the related company North Wales Power and Traction) were more successful in their power stations than their railways, building Cwm Dyli in 1906 and Dolgarrog in 1907, although by then they had run out of money and Dolgarrog was quickly sold to the Aluminium Corporation. I think the only operational railway they succeeded in owning was the Croesor Tramway, and this was horse-worked.

 

If you want a working example of an early electric railway, look at the Isle of Man. Here the motive appears not to have been a ready supply of electricity from hydro-electric plants but the wish to use steep gradients (1 in 24 or so), which becomes very inefficient if each train needs to lug around a heavy boiler and lots of water, as well as passengers and the carriages they ride in.

[Player of trains]

That being said even the MER was able to exploit water courses, the company placed a turbine in the Laxey river ant it was able to comfortably supply power for the railway in off peak services which was still a surprising amount of cars in use. I visited the island for the transport festival this summer just gone, and got to take a trip around the MER’s electrical infrastructure, it’s well worth the trip if you’re ever able to do it. Although it’s out of use much of the original switchgear remains at Derby Castle terminus and so are many of the substation sheds, some of which still had working mercury arc rectifiers until 2017! It is an excellent example of how a light railway with either third rail or overhead current may have been powered 

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Player of trains said:

The Rheidol was apparently proposed for electrification but I’ve never found more to it than a footnote on the railway website so that might be what you’re thinking of.

Yes, that’s the one. If I understand correctly the changes caused by the grouping helped to discourage that scheme from going ahead (as they did elsewhere in the country for some main line electrification schemes) although I wonder whether it would have been particularly viable anyway.

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

A couple of lines on the fringes of the Black Country are in that grey area between a light railway and a street tramway. One is the Kidderminster and Stourport, which connected those two towns. It ran as a street tramway within the towns but in between it ran over a reserved track beside the road. Today Kidderminster and Stourport have virtually merged but a hundred years ago it was open countryside in between. Had the K&S followed up on the proposals to build a line to Bewdley that would have been even more interesting. The Bewdley line was authorised under an LRO, unlike the main K&S which had an Act of Parliament, and was authorised to carry goods, minerals, parcels and animals as well as passengers

 

The other one is the Kinver Light Railway.

I knew about Kinver. It seems very interesting and as you say straddles the light railway/tramway divide, though possibly leaning more towards trams as it had through-running with the rest of the Black Country tram network.

[Hando]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

A couple of lines on the fringes of the Black Country are in that grey area between a light railway and a street tramway. One is the Kidderminster and Stourport, which connected those two towns. It ran as a street tramway within the towns but in between it ran over a reserved track beside the road. Today Kidderminster and Stourport have virtually merged but a hundred years ago it was open countryside in between. Had the K&S followed up on the proposals to build a line to Bewdley that would have been even more interesting. The Bewdley line was authorised under an LRO, unlike the main K&S which had an Act of Parliament, and was authorised to carry goods, minerals, parcels and animals as well as passengers

 

The other one is the Kinver Light Railway.

Does make me wonder if I should include the Kinver Light Railway and Burton and Ashby Light Railways on my map then 🤔

Though, I've always felt that the two (as with the Manx Electric Railway) were really just tramways with their own separate trackbeds, as opposed to being bona-fide electric railways (which used separate locos along with carriage stock, as the PBSSR intended).

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I am not sure that we can go back to the motives of the PBSSR directors, whether they went for electric because the possibility of hydro power was on their doorstep, or whether it was because they wanted to use steep gradients between Beddgelert and Pitt's Head (a rise of over 150 m in just 3.5 km as the crow flies). If the idea for electricity came first, then they certainly made use of it in laying out their line, and the partially constructed section north of Beddgelert rises at quite some gradient. You can see it here in this modern 1:25000 map - as the Welsh Highland north of Beddgelert station curves to the left so that it ends up heading a little east of south, the PBSSR trackbed leaves it and heads southwest, cutting off a huge loop of the later line. I've linked to a modern map because it shows the 10 metre contours, although these do rather exaggerate the situation - the PBSSR railway was in a cutting. It is a very long time since I walked the trackbed, and I don't have any references to hand, but I'd put it at close to 1 in 20. The later Welsh Highland route has a ruling gradient of 1 in 40.

 

If you want an excuse for electric then you need look no further than wanting steep gradients.

[Nearholmer]

5 hours ago, Hando said:

were really just tramways with their own separate trackbeds

I don’t know why there should be standoffishness about electric railways operated using railcars. There isn’t on the continent, and the ‘interurban’ is recognised as a genre in itself in the USA.

 

That having been said, some LRs were Street tramways in all essentials, built and operated using the 1896 legislation because the 1870 act was so ridiculously restrictive. 

[KeithMacdonald]

The construction of the Hebridean Light Railway continues here...

 

 

So far we've got from Isleornsay to Portree, with a branch to Kyleakin.

Just about to start on the section from Portree to Uig.

Edited October 31, 2023 by KeithMacdonald

[009 micro modeller]

17 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I don’t know why there should be standoffishness about electric railways operated using railcars. There isn’t on the continent, and the ‘interurban’ is recognised as a genre in itself in the USA.

Agreed, and not being standoffish but wondering about the best way to do this from a modelling point of view. For instance, they could be operated with tramcar-type vehicles but equally the PB&SSR seems to have been intending to operate more conventional loco-hauled trains like the neighbouring NG lines, albeit hauled by electric locos.

[corneliuslundie]

Would it largely depend on what the trade offered you - both the prototypes and a model?

Jonathan

[Nearholmer]

If you look at examples of electrified minor railways ranging from the MER to multiple overseas ones, the answer seems to depend on the amount of freight traffic.
 

Where there is relatively little freight, as on the MER and several others that I can think of, it tends to go behind a well-motored railcar - after all, a simple electric loco is just a railcar with all axles motored, and no passenger accommodation! Where there was a lot of freight, things went in the direction of locos, either for all trains, or for the freight trains. The MER did have a loco (No.23), but it didn’t last long in original form and I think the motor bogies got swapped about with passenger cars anyway.

 

The PB&SS may have “gone loco” both to cater for slate traffic, and because the prior existence of coaches. Size may have had a bearing too, because it had a very cramped loading gauge and a motor with control gear would have hogged an awful lot of room in an imaginable railcar (the motors were big!). They certainly intended double heading for freight.

 

The US interurbans are very interesting, because they had pure passenger railcars (some MU-fitted), “express cars”, which were like what we would call an MLV, used for high-value, low volume, time critical goods, parcels and mail, and in many cases locos to haul conventional through freight. I can’t think of a European line that had the full selection.

 

A very early electrified line was of course the Bessbrook & Newry, which used ‘tractor’ railcars, and intermodal goods wagons (they became horse-hauled carts for road travel), an idea that was also tried on the W&SSST.

 

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Nearholmer

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

The US interurbans are very interesting, because they had pure passenger railcars (some MU-fitted), “express cars”, which were like what we would call an MLV, used for high-value, low volume, time critical goods, parcels and mail, and in many cases locos to haul conventional through freight. I can’t think of a European line that had the full selection.

I’ve always found US interurbans interesting, and in some ways the MER has more in common with them than it does with most of the lines in the British Isles. Interesting that they could be MU-fitted as well, given that a lot of European trams hauling trailers still had to run round their trailers at the terminus.

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

If you look at examples of electrified minor railways ranging from the MER to multiple overseas ones, the answer seems to depend on the amount of freight traffic.

The backstory I’m currently thinking of going with for my fictional railway is that freight is generally hauled in longer trains by locomotives, and I don’t particularly have to worry about passenger traffic currently because, although it is supposed to have started in the 1900s I’ll be modelling it in decline in the 50s, with the regular passenger service having finished in the 30s (borrowing a bit from the W&LLR’s history there). Though I suppose it could be a mixture of tramcar-like vehicles and loco-hauled stock in mixed trains (a bit like some of the Irish NG lines, which were not electrified but used diesel railcars alongside loco-hauled trains). And you’re right in that there are multiple examples overseas of electrified NG common carrier railways, some with more railway-like features (like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2OrAzWHd-hI ) and others more like trams, they just don’t seem to have been built in the same numbers in the UK although they were sometimes proposed (apparently the Leek & Manifold is another one where electric traction was briefly considered).

 

[Nearholmer]

One that I keep going back to as a concept is the projected, indeed authorised, Woking & Bagshot LR (which grew planned tentacles in other directions, and called itself the West Surrey Light Railways).
 

This was to have been an electric ‘interurban’ with its own generating station, as an enabler of housing development across the Surrey Heath area, with an urban bit from the edge of Woking to the town centre. It’s a peg on which one could hang a lot of interesting things because the area was an important market-gardening centre, so plenty of “coal in; flowers and produce out”, on top of passenger traffic.

 

The NG railways in Northern Ireland were early targets for electrification too. When the Giants Causeway & Bushmills was first established (and that was s truly early electric, 1883) it was envisaged as part of a much bigger scheme that would have linked to other existing NG lines and seen them ‘juiced up’.

 

The trouble was that decades before widespread use of electricity, let alone a national grid, creating an electric railway was horribly expensive in capital terms, power stations never came cheap, and unless one could access hydro power it wasn’t a cheap thing to run either, the generating plant was quite inefficient until boilers improved and steam turbines were developed, so it was only viable with very high patronage typical of urban areas. In rural and even outer suburban areas steam traction, then petrol in the form of buses and lorries, was more economic.

[009 micro modeller]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

The trouble was that decades before widespread use of electricity, let alone a national grid, creating an electric railway was horribly expensive in capital terms, power stations never came cheap, and unless one could access hydro power it wasn’t a cheap thing to run either, the generating plant was quite inefficient until boilers improved and steam turbines were developed, so it was only viable with very high patronage typical of urban areas. In rural and even outer suburban areas steam traction, then petrol in the form of buses and lorries, was more economic.

Does any of this not apply to the early electric NG lines in other countries (the one I posted earlier opened in 1913)? For instance, did they organise power generation on a national or regional level differently? Otherwise the same situation as for modern electrification schemes probably applies - you don’t usually bother unless it’s infill electrification, or somewhere with a high frequency service, or somewhere where you can’t use anything else (in a tunnel, for example).

[Rich Uncle Skeleton]

On 31/10/2023 at 09:32, 009 micro modeller said:

Yes I knew about that one, and also the more vague proposals for a line connecting the Talyllyn and Corris lines. I have a feeling one of the English NG lines (or possibly another Welsh one a bit further south, but I don’t think it was Welshpool) was proposed for electrification as well, but can’t be sure.

The Owd ratty was considered, but I doubt that would have changed it’s fortunes.

[Nearholmer]

Electrical power and lighting first became a viable proposition in the early 1870s, when truly practical dynamos became available, but the then technology only permitted small, localised networks, and generation capacity only grew slowly, so that when railways/tramways first came to be electrified they built their own generating stations.

Long distance transmission of power became viable in the late 1890s, but even then generating stations were few and far-between, the smorgasbord of different voltages and frequencies in use made interconnection to form grids next door to impossible, and demand was advancing faster than generators could be built, so most railways/tramways still built their own stations. In Britain, the NER was I think the first to obtain power from a station that also supplied the locality for other uses, and the LB&SCR outsourced its generation, but the provider effectively ran a station within a station to meet their special needs, it wasn’t a “grid fed” scheme. Just around London the C&SLR, W&C, CLR, District/Underground, Met, LSWR, GWR, LNWR(NLR), LCC Tramways, and probably some more that I’ve forgotten  all had their own separate traction supply generating stations.

 

The picture wasn’t much different in Europe or the USA, although in the latter there was so much new development going on, towns and cities being built at an incredible rate, that it became a sort of special case with combined lighting, power and traction companies springing up all over the place, creating a ‘streetcar boom’, and slightly later an ‘interurban boom’, completely separate from the question of ‘heavy rail’ electrification.

 

If you look at where electrification took-off quickest it was where:

 

- hydro-electric generation was practicable; or,

 

- where there were special factors like long tunnels or ferocious gradients  that made steam traction unusually painful or expensive, or completely impractical; or,

 

- there was a great deal of traffic on offer and the existing motive power led to very high operating costs, as in urban street railways and very busy urban/suburban railways.

 

In those places it was viable to create a generating station solely or in large part to serve the needs of a railway/tramway. In most rural and outer-suburban districts anywhere away from mountains and waterfalls,  it wasn’t.

 

In Britain, the first “grid fed” electrification wasn’t until the Brighton Line in 1932/33, because before that there was no meaningful grid, and that situation wasn’t unique to Britain. The big strides in mainline electrification in Switzerland, parts of Germany, parts of France and Italy etc came largely on the back of railway-owned hydro-electric schemes, many built to operate at low frequencies (15Hz, 16.67Hz etc) to permit simple traction systems using “dc style” motors in a time before power electronics.

 

As I’m sure you know, there are many complexities and nuances that I’ve glossed over to prevent this post becoming excessively longer than it’s already excessive length!!

 

Edited November 1, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Hando]

On 31/10/2023 at 18:07, Nearholmer said:

I don’t know why there should be standoffishness about electric railways operated using railcars. There isn’t on the continent, and the ‘interurban’ is recognised as a genre in itself in the USA.

 

That having been said, some LRs were Street tramways in all essentials, built and operated using the 1896 legislation because the 1870 act was so ridiculously restrictive. 

Maybe I have been a bit too rigid in that view, though I didn't mean to come off as standoffish by any means...

The great irony of my attempts to strictly define, distinguish and compartmentalise between light railways and tramways is that I find examples where there is a great deal of crossover between the two! Still, I can always broaden my definition to include some of these lines, i.e. the MER, KLR, B&ALR, etc.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Hando

[whart57]

I'm not sure, but I don't think there were many examples of electrified tramways/light railways retaining steam locos, or even acquiring diesels, in order to provide a freight service. If there was a significant amount of freight traffic then the line was not electrified.

 

In the Netherlands for example the NZH, which before c1930 had run steam tramways in the  Amsterdam and the Hague areas, electrified some and closed the rest. North of Amsterdam for example the NZH electrified from Amsterdam to Edam and Volendam and the line to Alkmaar as far as Purmerend. North of Purmerend the line was closed and buses took over. However there was still some freight traffic, milk, cheese (guess where from) and fish, mainly eels, from Volendam. The NZH had kept some wagons from the steam era but either attached them to passenger trams or hauled goods trams with motor cars taken out of passenger service and assigned to the engineering department.

 

Another Dutch tramway, the Eastern steam tram from Utrecht to Arnhem, went through a two stage process, with petrol-electric locomotives replacing steam before a full electrification a decade or so later. Unfortunately this line ran through the Dutch defensive works and suffered badly in the Nazi invasion in 1940 where some of the heaviest fighting of the five day war took place. The coup de grace was four years later when the bit that ran through Oosterbeek and the paratroop landing sites of the Battle of Arnhem got terminally mangled too.

 

In England the Black Country tramways had a couple of special parcels tramcars, essentially a goods van on a tram truck with a trolley pole and driver's positions.

 

In a more exotic location, the Paknam Railway - Thailand's first - electrified in the 1920s. It too carried the small amounts of freight in goods wagons attached to electric motorcars. When Thailand's railways were nationalised the Paknam line didn't last long. It was separate from the rest of the system, used non-standard equipment and needed investment. The government thought road transport would be better. Cue Bangkok's notorious traffic jams and exhaust fumes ....    As an aside my Maenamburi layout is an imagining of a different history for the Paknam line, one that imagines it being extended beyond Paknam to Chonburi, Pattaya and Rayong while linking up with the rest of the network at ChaChoengsao  Junction. At least that is what the stock I'm building is supposed to serve.

[009 micro modeller]

13 minutes ago, whart57 said:

I'm not sure, but I don't think there were many examples of electrified tramways/light railways retaining steam locos, or even acquiring diesels, in order to provide a freight service.

No, but I was thinking of ones with substantial freight traffic (as opposed to the occasional wagon that could be attached to electric railcar/tram-operated passenger trains) having electric locomotives to handle freight.

[whart57]

19 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

No, but I was thinking of ones with substantial freight traffic (as opposed to the occasional wagon that could be attached to electric railcar/tram-operated passenger trains) having electric locomotives to handle freight.

 

Surely though, if the freight traffic was substantial the line wouldn't be a light railway? Unless it was Swiss.

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, whart57 said:

 

Surely though, if the freight traffic was substantial the line wouldn't be a light railway? Unless it was Swiss.

The sort and volume of freight traffic that, on an unelectrified light railway or main line company’s branch line, would be formed into either a mixed train, also including some passenger vehicles and hauled by a loco, or a separate goods train. As opposed to a single van being hauled behind a tram-like vehicle. Another example I suppose could be some sort of specific industry that creates a lot of freight traffic, and here there is an electric example (although it’s more of a tramway) - Camborne and Redruth Tramways had locomotives to haul trainloads of mineral wagons, in addition to passenger tramcars.

[Nearholmer]

Two questions going on at once in here, I think.

 

1. Some 1870 Act street tramways in Britain did have reasonable volumes of freight over them, hauled by locos (steeple-cab four-wheelers usually), and that explains some weird, just below standard, street tram gauges, because the incoming railway wagons ran on their flange-tips on the grooved tramway rail, whereas the trams and electric locos had much smaller flanges on the wheels, and ran on their tyres properly, flanges in the shallow grooves. I think Glasgow was the biggest system like that. There was also that strange electric tramway that carried (I think) tin ore in Cornwall - Camborne??

 

2. Nothing precluded an 1896 Act LR carrying a heavy freight traffic, and some did have pretty good freight sources, the Criggion Branch of the S&M, the concrete plant(s?) on the CM&DP, explosives and oil on the Corringham (which was a sort of half LR, half industrial railway), coal was the main purpose of the Campbeltown & Macrihanish, the EKLR etc.

 

So, if one imagineered an electric interurban LR, it could happily have a decent enough freight traffic to justify a loco (hopefully one looking like MER No.23 in its original form.

Edited November 2, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

A bit about Glasgow here: http://www.srpsmuseum.org.uk/10014.htm

 

Rather a good picture:

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Nearholmer

[Hando]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Two questions going on at once in here, I think.

 

1. Some 1870 Act street tramways in Britain did have reasonable volumes of freight over them, hauled by locos (steeple-cab four-wheelers usually), and that explains some weird, just below standard, street tram gauges, because the incoming railway wagons ran on their flange-tips on the grooved tramway rail, whereas the trams and electric locos had much smaller flanges on the wheels, and ran on their tyres properly, flanges in the shallow grooves. I think Glasgow was the biggest system like that. There was also that strange electric tramway that carried (I think) tin ore in Cornwall - Camborne??

 

2. Nothing precluded an 1896 Act LR carrying a heavy freight traffic, and some did have pretty good freight sources, the Criggion Branch of the S&M, the concrete plant(s?) on the CM&DP, explosives and oil on the Corringham (which was a sort of half LR, half industrial railway), coal was the main purpose of the Campbeltown & Macrihanish, the EKLR etc.

 

So, if one imagineered an electric interurban LR, it could happily have a decent enough freight traffic to justify a loco (hopefully one looking like MER No.23 in its original form.

In regards to the ore-carrying electric tramway in Cornwall, you're correct, it was the Camborne and Redruth Tramways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camborne_and_Redruth_Tramways