Thursday 29 April 2010

The lines of Skye

I've been using Google maps for a while now to work on a map of all the lines on Skye, the following map is the result.


View Isle of Skye Railway in a larger map

The blue lines represent both of the planned lines by the North British and Highland Railways, and the Skye Marble Railway (as this followed the same route as the HR proposal to Torrin). This also is the 'network' that I will be using as the basis for my 'history' that I will create for the IoSR when the layout is complete.

The turquoise line is the Ord quartzite quarry tramway, a line of only a few tens of metres long from the quarry to the main road.

The purple line shows the Talisker distillery tramway from the distillery, to the pier at Carbostbeg.

The yellow line is a funiclar railway for the Storr Lochs hydroelectic power schemes which was built to help transport materials during the construction of the HEP scheme.

The red line is the longest of the 'independent' railways on Skye, the Lealt Valley Diatomite Railway, running from the coast at Invertote, to Loch Cuithir.

Over time I hope to visit all of these sites and photograph whatever remains. For now though, the map will have to do.

I'll be posting some shots from Streetview soon which show some of the lines, along with some of the history of each.

Monday 19 April 2010

Skye Marble Railway

Time for a little more history...

The Skye Marble Company set up a quarry in the Kilchrist area of Skye near the foot of Ben Suardal, however they had problems transporting their produce to the then new pier at Broadford. In the latter half of the 1890's the grandiose schemes for lines across the majority of Skye were taking place, however none of these ever got off the ground. This consequently left the marble company still unable to transport their wares further afield to somewhere like the pier. In 1904 a 3'6" gauge line was opened from Kilchrist to Broadford Pier at a cost of £30,000 including the construction of a bridge to span the Broadford River so that it could connect to the pier.

The line was initially operated by horse power, however this clearly wasn't sufficient as Skye Marble Ltd. purchased two locos. The first is conspicuously absent from all sources of information on the line, however there is substantially more information about the second.

It was a Hunslet 0-4-0ST named 'Skylark' (works number 564 of 1892). This loco was initially delivered to T.S. Dixon with the name of 'Bruckless' in May 1892 for use in the construction of the Donegal to Kilbegys section of the County Donegal Railway in Ireland. It was sold in 1894 following completion of the line and was subsequently purchased by the Preston Corporation Waterworks Department for use in the construction of their 'Spade Mill no. 1 Reservoir'. It was here that it gained the name 'Skylark'. In the period between July 1897 and March 1905 the loco was under the ownership of the Newcastle & Gateshead Waterworks. It was from this owner that it was transferred to the ownership of Skye Marble in 1907.

There are some images of the loco and some of the quarry operation reproduced in 'Last Ferry to Skye' by Christopher J Uncles.

The company quarried material from their site at Kilchrist using a partly Belgian migrant workforce. The company seemed prosperous throughout the early years of the 20th century, however by 1913/14 the company had gone into liquidation. Like many schemes of this era it didn't prove as lucrative as first thought, however if it had lasted a while longer I don't think that it could survived the loss of large numbers of islanders to the front during World War 1. By 1914 the company had dismantled it's works at Kilbride and demolished the workers cottages. The managers house, the shop and quarries were all vacant and the railway was derelict.

'Skylark' was sold in May 1914 to John Mackay of Dublin Waterworks, and it ended it's days back in Ireland where it had been initially delivered.

In the 1980s there was a skip wagon from the line that was still visible in the forecourt of a garage at Breakish near Broadford. These wagons arrived at the garage from a short line at Ord quarry on the West of Sleat, having previously operated on the Skye Marble network. Traces of the line on the pier were beginning to disappear during the 1980s when it was coated with new layers of tarmac, subsequently burying the rails.

I hope to walk the entire course of the line the next time I go to Skye, and will post some images of the route on here when I do.

There were several other minor industrial lines on Skye, I will cover each of these in turn in future blog posts.

Saturday 17 April 2010

Rebranding

Regular visitors should be able to note the change of header on this blog to now say 'Isle of Skye Railway', this is to reflect the change from modelling a completely fictitious setting, to an actual proposed line on the Isle of Skye.

In time I expect I will create a dedicated website, but for now I'll keep the blog going and add a link to the new site when it's done.

All my modelling bits and bobs are up in the loft now and things are beginning to take shape. Half of the space required is cleared, but there is still some more work to do. I'd like to get this sorted during the summer so that I can enjoy the sun cutting up baseboard materials in the sunshine in the garden.

I must try and get to the National Archives at Kew to see the actual plan and survey results of the Hebridean Light Railway Proposal soon too.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

New Toy!

Well, Narrow Gauge South went better than I was expecting it to after the recent tribulations!

Dunbracken began the day being a little tempremental after the alterations to the fiddle yard. The end of the cassette mount had risen up somehow and was causing stock to derail. This was fixed with some abuse with a needle file to flatten off the track to the required level. Apologies if you witnessed the ensuing mock earthquake whilst I was doing this!

The 009 Society Sales stand is always worth a visit, and on this occasion I got to buy something that I've been looking for for a while. The last time I saw one it was on the sales stand but I decided not to go for it and have regretted it ever since. However I was fortunate enough to get it this time.

The item I am talking about is an N gauge MicroAce 0-6-6-0 mallet. Most mallets that I've seen before are tank locos, so the tender version is going to be huge!



This runs really well and watching two sets of valve gear go round is great. After some discussion on NGRM online I have pretty much decided to build a mini Burma Railways Mallet body on it.

I'm tempted to get this working fairly soon, it will be rather large to use on Dunbracken but it'll be good fun to build the body for it as it's like nothing I've tried before.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

We're not at home to Mr. Cock up!

Or so goes the quote from Blackadder....

Whilst I may not be permenantly at home to Mr. Cock up, he does seem to take up temporary residence at our house prior to exhbitions! This evening the layout was being turned around so that I could work on the fiddle yard. Whilst turning it round one end gave way and the layout collapsed, ripping off the lighting pelmet!

So, I've now got to refix the pelmet before Narrow Gauge South this weekend, as well as finishing off some stock. Fortunately, I have a 'cunning plan' to fix it and improve things slightly from before.

If anyone comes along to Narrow Gauge South that reads this make sure to come and say hello!