Dunalastair Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 No, not a personal hygiene product, Ladywash was a fluorspar mine with a narrow gauge tramway on the surface, one of several near Eyam in the Peak District. More details can be found in (https://pdmhs.co.uk/MiningHistory/Bulletin 14-5 - Tramways and Locomotves at 20th Century Mines in the Peak District.pdf), and in British Small Mines (South) by A J Booth Though there are schematic plans (which differ) and photos, I have struggled to get a picture of how the site went together, especially the orientation of the mine head gear (most fluorspar mines were drifts, not shafts). The preliminary render below shows where I have got to - the buildings in blue still survive, the rest was demolished last century. The mine headgear might be a challenge to print! I'm thinking A4 static diorama so about 1:300 scale. These are the surviving buildings, with the open shaft in front, once covered by a building but now open. Until recently, this provided ventilation for an active drift mine further west. https://derbyshiremines.blogspot.com/2019/02/ladywash-mine.html 18" gauge battery locos were used underground and also on the surface. Frustratingly, I cannot find any useful mapping on NLS. I have asked on the IRS forum, but If anybody here has any further information / photos then I would be interested. 5 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunalastair Posted December 21, 2023 Author Share Posted December 21, 2023 Latest version of render, scale now increased to 1:200, with 'rails' at 2.25mm gauge. I have now successfully printed the design for the headgear. Do I continue with this guesstimate of the building layout or wait and see if any more information turns up? Some more staring at available images suggests that the orientation of the headgear is probably right, but I'm still not clear about the exact position. And should I model it 'as operating' or after closure, with the yard cluttered with equipment brought up from the galleries? 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunalastair Posted December 27, 2023 Author Share Posted December 27, 2023 On 21/12/2023 at 09:12, Dunalastair said: Do I continue with this guesstimate of the building layout or wait and see if any more information turns up? So I continued and roughly assembled the diorama components. As a reminder, scale is 1:200 and prototype gauge is 18" so 2.25mm on the model. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunalastair Posted January 6 Author Share Posted January 6 I am still hoping to get more information on Ladywash, but in the meantime I have been making some progress with the diorama. The scene now represents when the mine took delivery of one of the manriders which now operates at Steeple Grange. Road vehicle prints were scaled down from previous 1:148 models. I think the lorries were my own designs, but the Landy came from Thingiverse. The battery electric loco represents a 1930s G&B machine. 12 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TechnicArrow Posted January 13 Share Posted January 13 I walked past the Ladywash chimney when I was briefly in the area last summer, having very little clues what it was. Fascinating to read all that you're digging up about it! Your model is looking equally fascinating, good work! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunalastair Posted January 22 Author Share Posted January 22 (edited) On 13/01/2024 at 13:24, TechnicArrow said: I walked past the Ladywash chimney when I was briefly in the area last summer, having very little clues what it was. Fascinating to read all that you're digging up about it! Your model is looking equally fascinating, good work! Thankyou for the kind words. I have just been kindly sent some more photographs of Ladywash, which seem to show that what I thought was a row of doorways were mostly windows, all but the far tramway entrance. So I have now removed the yellow tape and silvered the apertures to represent mucky glass. Talking of chimneys, I took part in the Telford parkrun on Saturday, where on the larger of the two laps we ran past the imposing Stirchley Chimney in the Town Park. At 209' it is considerably taller than the Ladywash chimney - even at 1:200 it would be more than 300mm high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirchley_Chimney Looking on the historic NLS maps, Telford Town Park was a bewilderingly industrial area back in the day https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.5&lat=52.66336&lon=-2.45065&layers=6&b=1 Edited January 22 by Dunalastair Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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