Category Archives: Railways and Tramways Blog

New Fancy Colliery and it Railways

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New Fancy was a colliery on the Forest of Dean Coalfield near Parkend in Gloucestershire, England. After the colliery closed its spoil heap was landscaped. The site has a picnic area, and viewing site from where goshawks can be seen. It is linked to the Forest of Dean Family Cycle Trail. The top of the old coal mine spoil heap has been converted into a viewing site for birdwatchers, and gives panoramas over an extensive forested area. It is best known for viewing raptors, especially goshawks, best seen from late morning onwards in February and March.

New Fancy sculptureThere are now two significant sculptures at the site. The first is the Roll of Honour sculpture which was commissioned by the Forest of Dean Local History Society to honour those who worked and were killed or injured in the mines and quarries of the Forest of Dean. It was buil by Graham Tyler and John Wakefield and was unveiled in 2005. It consists of three elements – stone, iron (represented by rusted steel), and coal (represented by carved and blackened local oak) – and stands around 11 feet (3.4 m) high. Stainless steel discs set into the sculpture represent the tokens carried by miners to determine who was below ground in the event of accidents.
The second is the Forest of Dean Geomap, a 900 square feet (84 m2) sculpture of the Geomap-New-Fancygeology and mines of the area, was unveiled at the New Fancy picnic site in May 2008. It was commissioned by the local history society, who received a grant from DEFRA’s Aggregates Levy Sustainability Fund, and was constructed by sculptor David Yeates of Mitcheldean before being assembled on site. The rock strata depicted are built from samples of the rock they represent. Metal discs represent the locations of the main iron and coal mines and quarries, with black lines to represent coal seams and white lines for railway routes. It is flat and polished, but not shiny, and is intended to be walked on.
The Colliery

New-Fancy-Colliery-b-w-1Wikipedia suggests thst the New Fancy colliery was opened by Edward Protheroe in 1827, as part of the Park End Coal Company in the Forest of Dean. It seems that he acquired the interest from his uncle in 1812. Details are scarce, however the 1841 Coal Awards confirmed the possession of the New Fancy gale to Edward Protheroe. In the Third Schedule to the 1841 Awards it is mentioned that in 1831 Edward Protheroe was granted a license to erect a pumping and winding engine at New Fancy but it is likely that this was not done as in a list of coal works in March 1841 there is no mention of New Fancy. The gale itself was certainly being worked by 1840, probably through the Parkend gale, as in that year Protheroe stated that he required a ‘better, cheaper, outlet’ for his New Fancy coals. The cheaper outlet would come about by sinking a shaft on the New Fancy gale thus avoiding the wayleave charged by the Crown on all coal from one gale passing through the barrier into another. The New Fancy gale award covered the coal in the Churchway High Delf, Rockey, Starkey, Park End High Delf, Little Delf and Smith Coal veins.

Parkend-New-Fancy-c1905By around 1852 it seems that two shafts were being sunk. These seem to have been completed in 1857. At the first half-yearly meeting of the Forest of Dean Central Railway Company it was stated that the colliery ‘was in a forward state and will when opened afford large traffic’. The colliery was producing coal by 1860 when 250 tons a day were being sent over the Severn & Wye’s Kidnalls Mill, or Moseley Green, branch of the tramroad. A connection to this branch had been authorised and built in 1859. It was to be another ten years before the colliery gained a railway connection in the form of a branch of the Forest of Dean Central which was authorised under a Crown license dated 6th April 1868. The large traffic hoped for over this route diminished rapidly when the Mineral Loop was opened in 1872 and a connection was made to the colliery. It is likely that the rails on the Central’s connection had been removed by 1878.

New_Fancy_Mosely-GreenWikipedia suggests that, by 1860, the Colliery was owned by Sully & Company and in 1885 was sold to the Parkend & New Fancy Collieries Company. However, this may be an oversimplification. By 1878 James Sully was the only remaining partner in the Park End Coal Company and the Parkend Coal Company Ltd. was formed to acquire the collieries. The subscribers to the new company were James Sully and Richard Sully, both described as coal merchants from Bridgewater, Somerset, John Nicholls, also of Bridgewater, William Unwin of Oxford, John Bailey, Sydney Thomas of Parkend House, colliery manager and Thomas Thomas.

Parkend-New-FancyIt appears that the new company may have been heavily in debt from the start. By 1880 it was in difficulties. At that time the company wasthought to possess nine-hundred acres of coal in the Starkey seam in connection with New Fancy. Probably the collieries were bought by a Mr. Jackson in 1881.
In 1883 the management of New Fancy were negotiating with the Great Western Railway, who worked the Forest of Dean Central, to be reconnected to their line at Howbeach as the rates via the Central to Lydney were 5d per ton cheaper. This was undoubtedly a ploy to gain cheaper rates from the Severn & Wye in which the colliery company was sucessful. However heavy mortgages led to closure in 1883 and a new confederation acquired the collieries in 1884.
New machinery was installed with the first compressed air coal cutters in the district and probably in the West of England being used. The reason for their introduction was the high cost of coal production at New Fancy due to the thinness of the seams. They averaged only 17 inches with the thickest being the Parkend High Delf at three feet.
In March 1885, the collieries were sold again to a new company called the Parkend & New Fancy Collieries Co. Ltd. From about 1888 onwards coal from the Parkend gale was worked out through New Fancy as the shaft was closer to the coal being worked and therefore haulage costs were reduced. In December 1889 a Severn & Wye minute records that the company had acquired the deep gales underlying their property and again asked if the S & W would give a concession on the coal rates as the colliery could be opened to the Central.
The company continued trading until in March 1892 the Parkend Deep Navigation Collieries Co. Ltd. bought up the company in exchange for 4,000 fully paid up £10 shares.
The Parkend Deep Navigation Collieries Co. Ltd. had been incorporated in October 1890 with an authorised capital of £100,000 in £10 shares. The subscribers were William Cooper, Parkend; William Esau Heard, Newport; John Witson, Cardiff; John Gething, Newport; William Thomas, Lydney; Arthur Graham, Parkend; and Percy Marfell of Lydney. The first 4,000 shares were allocated to the Parkend and New Fancy Collieries Co. Ltd. in consideration of their concern. A further 1,000 shares were issued to a John Griffiths of Willsbury for the purchase of the Rising Sun and Union Colliery from him. Up to 1904 only a further 739 shares were taken up as the number of members of the company was limited to fifty and it was not intended to invite the public to subscribe. Thomas Hedges Deakin was the Managing Director and Chairman of the company.
In 1914 electric equipment was installed to power pumping plant, haulage engines and coal cutting machinery. The generating station was alongside the Castlemain pumping engine at Parkend and a pole route was constructed to bring the power to the colliery.
The output of New Fancy steadily declined until final closure in August 1944. From 1940 it had averaged about 350 wagons per week.
The site of the New Fancy Colliery is a scheduled monument.
Railways
The Colliery was first served by a tramway, and then by two different railway lines … the Forest of Dean Central Railway and the Severn and Wye Railway Mineral Loop. The Forest of Dean Central Railway was very hopeful of a large coal traffic from the Colliery and was commercially dependent on that expectation. The Mineral Loop provided connections to a number of forest collieries and was a more successful venture than the Central Railway.

 

References
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Fancy
http://lightmoor.co.uk/forestcoal/CoalNewFancy.html
https://rogerfarnworth.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/the-forest-of-dean-central-railway/

Le Train de Merveilles – Nice to Tende – Part B – A Link with the Mediterranean

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http://railwaywondersoftheworld.com/link-mediterranean.html

This magazine Railway Wonders of the World was produced in the 1930s when the Nice to Cuneo railway was relatively new. Most copies of the magazine now survive as two bound volumes. I am fortunate enough to own both. This article is a great insight into the line in the 1930s.

Le Train de Merveilles – Nice to Tende – Part A – An Introduction

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Starting from the sea level, the Nice-Tende railway line rises to over 1000 metres in height as it travels towards Le Col de Tende.wpd85d76c3_05_06torre-saorge
The line was an amazing feat of engineering, a real achievement in a dense, hilly region. It is distinguished by an impressive succession of structures (over 200 In all): viaducts erected overlooking deep canyons and countless tunnels in the mountains (including 4 helical structures!).
In the immediate post war era the line was closed as many of the major structures had been destroyed. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1970s that those structures were replaced. Some of the following pictures illustrate the condition of the line before renovation.hautpays51-cai1

hautpays51-cai2
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07m
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The project to undertake the rebuilding of the structures on the line and to re-lay the standard gauge track was costly and was undertaken by the regional authorities in France and Italy. Many of the structures were rebuilt by the end of 1978.

Le Viaduc de Scarassoui
This viaduct was built across the valley of the Roya between two tunnels close to Fontan. It was commissioned in 1923. Its designer was Paul Séjourné, the engineer was André Martinet and the contractor was Mercier, Limousin et Cie. It was a graceful, elegant structure.

viaduc_scarassoui_cle222b3d-e72ablivre-cdt-scara1

399_001livre-cdt-scara2It survived for little more than 20 years before it became a casualty of the Nazi withdrawal from southern Europe in 1945. When the bridge was blown the tracks where left hanging over the river.hautpays32-scara36

Once the tracks were removed the bridge lay derelict until 1977 when a replacement structure was started. It was simpler and more functional but none-the-less a dramatic structure in its own right.387_001viaduc_scarassoui-situ01_cle5d5215TDM-sur-viaduc-article-272X194_tcm65-49743_tcm65-32994_272x194

And finally, … for now at least!

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Written on the flight home, early on 23rd April – St. George’s Day.

My first visit to Uganda in 1994 started with a train journey from Mombasa. So it is perhaps fitting to end with a short piece about what is happening to the railways of Uganda now. The first line from Mombasa through Nairobi and on to Kampala and then Kasese was built well over a hundred years ago and is of a narrow gauge construction. There is to be a new line from Mombasa through to Kampala provided a current dispute between the Chinese contractors and the Ugandan government can be resolved.

I read this piece in the Railway Magazine on the flight home ….

“Uganda set for rail revival? …. Freight traffic in Uganda is slowly increasing, although long-term prospects probably depend on the completion of the proposed standard gauge line from Mombasa, in Kenya, to Kampala, in Uganda. The line is being built by Chinese contractors and is now the subject of disputes between the Ugandan government and the contractors.”

This new line will be to standard gauge and there will be transhipment issues between different parts of the network.

The passenger service I enjoyed in the 1990s is long gone. New Vision in Uganda carried a story about the decline of the railways.

http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/629156-How-Uganda-Railway-collapsed.html

I did a little bit of research on the way home.

The government is considering developing commuter services for Kampala:

www.railwaygazette.com/news/…/kampala-passenger–service-planned.html

Two wikipedia articles are interesting, giving some good background information:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Railway

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda_Railways_Corporation

RVR (Rift Valley Railways) is the new franchise holder for the railways and is beginning to undertake some development work.

http://www.raillynews.com/2013/gulu-railway-re-opens-20-years

http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate-News/RVR-breaks-even-in-the-first-half-to-June/-/539550/1941582/-/v7mf82/-/index.html

The Forest of Dean Central Railway

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FDCR 1FDCR 2The Forest of Dean Central Railway

This short railway line was operated by the Great Western Railway (GWR) to serve collieries in the heart of the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. From its opening in 1868, the line was operated by the GWR and run by the Central Company until 1923. The GWR took over the line in 1923 and ran it until its closure in 1949. It ran from Awre Junction through Blakeney and on into the forest with the intention of reaching Foxes Bridge Colliery. In fact the line only travelled as far as the New Fancy colliery. It served several mines and quarries along its route as well as the corn mills in Blakeney.

Opening

Plans for a railway in the heart of the forest were first drawn up in 1826, but it took until 1868 for the Forest of Dean Central Line to open. A branch line to the New Fancy Colliery followed in 1869. A junction with the main Gloucester to Newport Line was formed at Awre, although the original plan was to open the line to a new dock at Brimspill on the River Severn. The railway never reached the river. It was built initially to serve the Howbeach Collieryt and then ultimately to reach the Foxes Bridge Colliery and in anticipation of its arrival,  the formation there was fenced and a bridge built for the Severn & Wye Railway’s Mineral Loop, but in the end, no track was laid north of the link to the New Fancy Colliery.

Decline and closure

The long delay from 1826 to 1868 was probably the ultimate cause of the railway’s failure to achieve success. The opening of the Severn & Wye Railway in the 1870s resulted in much of the coal traffic for which the Forest of Dean Central Railway was built being lost to the new company. By 1875 the section to the central mines and the New Fancy Colliery was first neglected and then abandoned. In 1921 virtually all of the traffic north of Blakeney ceased. Although for a time the GWR continued to run some services north of Blakeney, those ceased in 1932.

Today

FDCR 3Some lengths of the formation remain, as do some of the structures. Part of the Blakeney Viaduct is still extant as is the Blackpool Bridge.

 

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway – 2

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The following are links to information about the line which became part of the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway in 1847:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheffield,_Ashton-under-Lyne_and_Manchester_Railway

http://www.railbrit.co.uk/Sheffield_Ashton-under-Lyne_and_Manchester_Railway/index.php

 

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway – 1

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I am reading a book by Bill Laws: “Fifty Railways that Changed the Course of
History” published by David & Charles, Newton Abbot, UK, 2013 ISBN-13:978-1-4463-0290-3.

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway features as the 17th of these and particularly for the construction of the Woodhead Tunnel. This was a project that exposed one particular company’s shocking attitude to the safety of its workers and it provided some significant impetus to campaigns for better working conditions for navvies.

“When the early transport ships bearing British miscreants to New South Wales landed in Australia, hundreds had perished during the voyage. The prisoners, including a few of those disreputable railway labourers, notorious for their hard drinking and fighting, were so crammed into the ships’ holds that they died. The British government ordered that, in future, the charterers be held responsible for the convicts’ well-being. It produced immediate results. The transporters, paid a bonus for every prisoner safely landed, now took care of their cargo,” (p72).

However, this principle of responsibility for one’s workers was usually ignore by Victorian entrepreneurs and business leaders: “What use had a mill owner for some eight-year-old girl who, through her own carelessness, lost her hand in a machine? Why should a railway company be responsible for a navvy’s family, when the man died, dead drunk, in a tunnel collapse? And why should the shareholder, risking his capital on such a brave enterprise as the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway Company’s plan to tunnel under the Pennines, have to mollycoddle workers who were being paid to do their job?” (p72/73).

Wellington Purdon, who was assistant engineer on the tunnel, was asked by a government enquiry if it was not wiser to use safety fuses while blasting rock He replied, “Perhaps it is: but it is attended with such a loss of time, and the difference is so very small, I would not recommend the loss of time for the sake of all the extra lives it would save, ” (p73).

Purdon’s comments revealed how little the railway companies valued their workers. The enquiry and Purdon’s comments should have changed the course of industrial history. Instead, Parliament shelved the enquiry’s report.

Edwin Chadwick

In 1845 the first train through the completed Woodhead Tunnel was met by a celebration. However, the social reformer Edwin Chadwick did not celebrate for he had calculated that the rate of attrition on the contract to build the tunnel was the equivalent of losses incurred in war. “With 32 killed and 140 injured, the casualty rate was higher than in the Battles of Waterloo” (p73).

The navvies on the Woodhead Tunnel paid to keep their own doctor on hand, Henry Pomfret. “The chief engineer, Wellington Purdon’s boss was Charles B. Vignoles who was also a share­holder in the railway company. When the contract ran over time and over budget, the job bankrupted him. The pioneering engineer Joseph Locke took over as more than a thousand labourers hewed away at the muck and mud from seven different shafts, one at each end and five vertical shafts from above, with pick, shovel and explosives. It was obvious to Locke that the only way to complete the project was to drive the men like animals and, if questioned, lie” (p73/74).

The job took six years to complete. When it came to an end Dr. Pomfret talked to his friend Dr. Roberton, who, inturn talked to Edwin Chadwick. “In January 1846 Chadwick delivered a paper to the Manchester Statistical Society: The Demoralization and Injuries Occasioned by Want of Proper Regulations of Labourers Engaged in the Construction and Works of Railways. Despite the exhausting title, the contents were as volatile as navvies’ explosives. They revealed how injured men were forced to fend for themselves, how most workers lived in homemade hovels (occasioning an outbreak of cholera) through the worst of the Pennine winters. Chadwick exposed the practice of not paying wages for several weeks and then paying them in public bars. The pubs encouraged the navvies to drink their wages, while delayed payments forced them onto the truck system, a version of the company store principle that kept the men and their families in hock to the railway company. (The truck was already outlawed in Britain, but the statute, laid down before the railway rush, had not specified railway workers.) Chadwick showed how the reputation of the average navvy as a feckless, reckless drunk was a direct result of the industry plying him with booze instead of provid­ing him with proper food and housing” (p75).

“The rail company and the engineers denied the charges against them. Nevertheless, the government inquiry in July 1846 recommended extending the Truck Act to the railways, making the companies responsible for the health, welfare and accommodation of their navvies and, most important of all, putting the liability for deaths or injuries on the company. The Members of Parliament also insisted that men should be paid weekly, and in cash, not in tokens for the truck. The inquiry report was never even debated” (p75).

However, “although no railway man was censured over the Wood-head Tunnel scandal, Chadwick’s efforts were not in vain. His correla­tion between losses on the battlefield and those on the railways caught the public imagination and in future, when navvies were killed, the press was quick to take up the story” (p75).

Woodhead Tunnel is infamous for the loss of life during its construction, but it is nothing compared to the massive loss of life associated with many colonial railways in Asia, Africa and South America.

Hereford – The Construction of Barrs Court Station 7

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My father-in-law, David Cambridge, has been taking us on a tour of the work he did to produce an N Gauge model of Hereford Station for me. In this final post on this subject he makes some comments about the construction work and shows us a picture of a 7mm model alongside the 2 mm model of Hereford Barrs Court Station:

IM000074.JPGIn 7mm scale the usual rule of thumb for adding detail is that if you can’t see it on the model from a distance of two feet, omit or simplify it. Since the human eye looks for detail from about the same distance regardless of scale then much of the detail on a model of this size would have to be omitted. As I mentioned at the start, compromises would be necessary. For example, it proved impossible to find a solution to the brickwork and stonework on the octagonal chimney stacks. Application of brick paper would destroy the octagonal shape unless a separate piece was applied to each face. The solution was to paint them brick colour and apply a stone colour base and cap. I don’t feel that viewed from two feet away this is that noticeable. Other features over which compromise was necessary were the finials. These are quite a complex shape so a much simpler one was evolved as turning plastic on this scale was impracticable. I’m less happy about these, and probably the only real solution would be to turn one up from brass and have lost-wax castings made. This might also be a possible solution for the chimneys.

On the other hand, since the clock on the centre of the front elevation is such a noticeable feature it seemed worth making the effort to produce this in as much detail as possible. The iron tracery was obviously out of the question but a really detailed clock face was not, and this was computer produced and printed on glossy photo-paper, and I feel is quite effective.
The canopy over the central frontage has not yet been constructed. The only photograph so far traced does not yield sufficient information to make even an approximation so this is, one hopes, a temporary omission.

… and a final thought.

Having looked so long and hard at this station I have grown to appreciate and enjoy its overall design and though I have only seen it once in the flesh I feel as though I know it quite well.

My grandparents lived in Hereford and my father was born there; they must have travelled through this station a number of times.

The Victorian architects knew what they were doing in designing such an impressive station appropriate in size and style for a cathedral and county city. Detailed study of the exterior leads one to wonder what the interior must have been like. Many stations of the period had just as fine interiors as exteriors. I don’t know of any existing photographs of the inside, so this remains an intriguing and unanswered question.

David Cambridge