Forward! Posted December 8, 2009 Share Posted December 8, 2009 Hello all, I don't often venture in to anything narrower than 4'8 1/2'' gauge, but thought you chaps would be interested to know I recently stumbled on a roll of ten drawings commissioned by the Duke of Bedford for a manure processing and gas-works dated 1857. Thety are held at Cambridgeshire Archives, in an uncatalogued collection reference [R77/38, 'Plans of Estate works 1857'] The drawings include; plan of the site, showing all buildings, tramway tracks and points scale drawings of a 3ft gauge wagons, hand-crank crane, tramway points, and wagon turntables. (all 1/4'' scale or larger (in one case, a wheel is drawn full size!) drawings of gas producing machinery and manure mill machinery elevation & plan of buildings. drawing of small wharf on the Thorney River served by two 3ft gauge tram tracks- presumably for the delivery of coke and manure by 'lighter'. I know nothing else about this endevour, even whether it was built. The pink shaded building in the middle of the area is the Thorney water purification works, a fine jacobean style building built by the Duke of Bedford and survives to this day as a museum and village hall/fire station! Plenty of prototype pictures around! Just thought you chaps might be interested- it might have some modelling potential! Will Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
LNERGE Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 I think it is Thorney MGN that still has some narrow gauge rails set in concrete near the station.. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Forward! Posted December 23, 2009 Author Share Posted December 23, 2009 The buidlings illustrated certainly were built- they're the Thorney Museum, villge hall and fire station now. However, the 186 OS map didn't show any rails. That said- been a standard gauge guy I don't know whether narrow gauge lines were drawn on 1;2500 scale mapping? Will Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
richrail009 Posted January 4, 2010 Share Posted January 4, 2010 Happy New Year everyone. Looking at the drawings and poking around the internet, I found this document http://www.peterborough.gov.uk/pdf/env-conservation-Thorneyappraisal1-6.pdf If you look through and find the maps, you'll find the Thorney Gas Works and Sewage Works on Map 3/1887-1889 and Map 4/1901-1903. These are downloadable as .pdf's and if you use the 'loup' tool (Menu - tools - loup tool) and click on the area, you can zoom right in and see the building shaped as on the drawings from Will and little dotted-lines which may be rails or just paths. What seems to be the main line runs just above the works. Just thought this might interest someone. Rich Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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