E. R. Calthrop

Whilst down in the Westcountry over Christmas and New Year I went to visit the Launceston Railway and had a ride on one of their 'Bah Humbug Specials', however this was only half the reason for going. They have quite a good shop, and i can normally guarantee that when i go there i'll come back with a new narrow gauge orientated book!


This time i found this...

Not quite how to build your own light railway, but an interesting paper written by E.R. Calthrop (of Leek and Manifold and Barsi railway fame) in 1897. In the paper he goes into the cost effectiveness of using narrow gauge, and how 2'6" is the ideal gauge for a combination of reduced build costs and maximum carrying capacity. He also goes on to talk about standardisation of parts between all items of rolling stock etc. and basically reducing costs... dare i say it, something that a Scottish line would be interested in?

It's ideas like this that i find interesting (maybe from being an engineer by trade, i don't know...) and as such i've decided to incorporate him into the history of the Aradig Bay Joint Railway Co.

As i've alluded to in a previous blog entry of mine i'm going to come up with a history of the line for an added bit of fun. The basic concept is that two lines operated independently, then merged and paid for a line to be constructed through the hilly area that separated them.

My thought was to have the joint company appoint E.R. Calthrop as the chief engineer for the design and construction of the line that would pass through the mountains. This would give me three sets of stock that i could run...

1 - From the first original line - one distinct style. Possibly smallish locos as it would have run on a comparatively flat route.

2 - From the second original line - same as above, although one these original sets would very rarely venture over the hills...

3 - That bought for the new joint line which was powerful enough to operate through the hills - more likely to be of a slightly more modern appearance.

This would basically justify me having all sorts of items of stock running on PnC from small(ish) tank locos to large locos for the more strenuous route. Also a variety of carriage and wagon stock could be built up. E.R. Calthrop advocates the use of stock with the same axle loading as the locos (5 tons for the Barsi rly. mentioned in the book), so a variety of older and more modern stock also.

Plus i've always liked the Leek and Manifold locos, and he seems to have adopted that style as a standard design, simply experimenting with the wheel arrangement as can be seen with this shot of a Leek and Manifold loco at the top and a Barsi loco below it...

The Barsi one seems a little over the top, but a variation on the L&M one might well appear in some form.

When the layout proper gets underway i'd like to set up a website and use this blog for build updates, so all that is being developed for the history will transfer over to the website to form the story of the line...

I always enjoyed reading Narrow Gauge Adventure by P.D. Hancock, i'm sure mine won't be as influential as that, but hopefully someone will enjoy reading it.