There is nothing new about narrow gauge modelling. Ever since Don Boreham in his great wisdom produced his masterpiece, 'Narrow Gauge Modelling', way back in the bad old days, before narrow gauging was socially acceptable to the plebs (who thought that only trains running on 4ft 8in gauge were the done thing) we have seen the gradual development of modelling in various scales from 009 to 16mm and bigger.
However for all the narrow gauge modelling that is undertaken, there are by comparison few layouts produced showing a historically accurate model of a given prototype. One of the main reasons for this seems to stem from the fact that most modellers in narrow gauge prefer to regard it as a fun gauge rather than a serious subject of prototypical interest.
This to me and, I am sure, to a lot of others must seem a rather sad state of affairs, for although a number of accurate layouts have been produced in the past, few projects of late seem to be based on actual prototypes. This situation has led me to produce this article on one of the least well documented narrow gauge lines that once ran in mid-Wales.(Obviously he hasn't read his own excellent book, The Corris Railway Gemini Publishing 1977 – EJ.)
The Corris Railway (Corris, Machynlleth & River Dovey Tramroad) was a product of the slate industry of mid-Wales. Like the Ffestiniog it survived solely to transport slates and slabs from the slate quarries, running from Ratgoed and Aberllefenni to Machnynlleth, onward shipment being by the Cambrian Railways to customers both home and overseas.
Built to 2ft 3in gauge, the route of the original horse tramroad was surveyed by Thomas Nichols in 1850. However no move was made to build a tramroad until 1858 when a line was built from Aberllfenni and Ratgoed south through the market town of Machynlleth to Quey Ward near Derwenlas, where a jetty was built to serve the slate schooners that transported the product to the customers. Later, after the Cambrian arrived in the mid 1860's, the tramroad west of Machynlleth was abandoned and left to go derelict. At this time a consortium of quarry proprietors owned both the line and a number of the slate schooners in addition, as plant and equipment were expensive, far too expensive for any one person to be able to afford the heavy capital investment on their own.
By the late 1860's and early 1870's the quarry owners became increasingly concerned that the large amounts of slate being carried on their line were overtaxing its capacity, and began to look for better ways than using horses to haul the slate. As a result, in 1878 locomotives were introduced, and the permanent way was hastily brought up to standard with 401b steel flat bottom rail in place of the cast iron 151b bridge rail.
In 1880 a rail passenger service was introduced from Machynlleth to Corris, being subsequently extended to Aberllefenni in 1887. The early toadies resembled horse-drawn street cars of the period more than railway vehicles. Because of their poor riding characteristics Mr. Dix, the Railway's Manager, designed a bogie vehicle in 1890 which was subsequently built by The Falcon Works at Loughborough, along with three underframes which were then used for rebuilding some of the tram coaches into bogie vehicles. These were in turn backed up by a delivery of four bogie vehicles built by the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Company.
In the late 1890's two rebuilds were rebuilt with clerestory roofs to improve both their ventilation and lighting and very home-made they looked too, one having a roof lower than the other. The wagon fleet was quite interesting, with a whole host of different types of private owner open wagons from various quarries up the line, and the standard (or non-standard) Corris Rly I ton and 11 ton open wagons with their curly spoked wheels and end doors. The only van owned by the Company latterly was the brake van. This garden shed on wheels had a brake handle so small that you could quite happily jam your hand between the screw top and the van wall.
Locomotives came in the form of three 0-4-2Ts built originally as 0-4-0s by Falcons of Loughborough in 1878 and a Kerr Stuart, special 'Tattoo' Type 0-4-2T, built in 1921 to replace locomotives 1-2. However No. 2 and No. 3 were both rebuilt in 1920, and No. 2 remained in traffic despite the new replacement which was supposed to supplant it.
The main Stations on the line were at Machynlleth, Corris and Aberllefenni. However, small stations were opened in the late 1890's at Fridd Gate, Llwyngwern and Esgair-Geiliog. Later a halt opened at Garneddwen, between Corris and Aberllefenni. In addition to all of the stations described, request stops rather like bus stops were recognised by the Company as stopping places along the line.
The Company had been taken over by The Imperial Tramways Group in 1878 and remained in their hands until 1930 when it became part of the Gone Withered and Rusty Railway Company, otherwise known as The Great Western. This Company, lacking imaginative local management capable of retaining existing and developing new traffic, allowed the Railway, which despite its size had been kept in a very high standard of repair when under local control, to fall into a state of genteel decrepitude.
After closing the line to passengers on January 1st 1931 the Great Western allowed what remained to die a lingering death, until by 1940 the Railway and its traffic were but a shadow of its former self. This state of affairs was partly due to the world economic slump, partly to changed traffic patterns, and partly to bad "absentee landlord" management by the new owners. The line bumbled on through World War Two until in 1948, after Government takeover, the new owners at 222 Marylebone Road decided to face the inevitable and give the line a decent burial. In fact they were only endorsing a Great Western decision taken by default of maintenance and capital investment as far back as 1930. The Corris Railway duly closed to traffic on August 20th 1948; this was partly the result of a Management decision and partly because of the River Dovey which had a habit of flooding the bridge just north of Machynlleth had now seriously undermined the approach tracks on one side. After the final closure the track and steel upperwork of the Dovey Bridge were rapidly demolished. However the Ratgoed Tramway, which connected Aberllefenni Station with Ratgoed Slate Quarry, remained open to traffic until July 1952, the motive power being horses.
As I said at the start of this short article, it is only in recent times that narrow gauge modelling has become socially acceptable among the modelling masses. There was a time way back in the bad old days when N.G. layouts were put in hot sweaty corners of exhibitions, as Don Boreham found out to his dismay and vexation at a Central Hall Exhibition back in the early 1950's. For myself I intend to model the Corris in 16mm scale, "Yes, I know the purists will say that's wrong, it should be 14mm scale". Its only 1.5ins out either side of flange gauge and in any scale you have to go a hell of a long way before you notice the scale is out. (Shame on you; I'm sending a table of 14mm/l ft scale conversions by the next post - Ed).
I feel that this line will make a welcome change from the usual Festiniog or Talyllyn based layout one sees so often at model railway exhibitions.
Contrary to popular belief the Corris was not just like a second Talyllyn but in a neighbouring valley. The Corris was a more complete railway than the Talyllyn in every way. In its heyday, for a start, it was a real common-carrier railway as opposed to a slate tramway that by an accident of history happened to have steam locomotives. Today the roles are reversed and I am glad to say the Tallyllyn is the real railway.
The Corris railway offers a great deal to the modeller, not only from the rolling stock point of view, but also in affording the modeller an interesting selection of buildings and line side installations. In addition the Corris had a full set of signals which controlled most of the main line operations. Among the more interesting locations operationally was Corris itself, with its overall roof station and signalling controlled by a ground frame.
The Locomotive Depot at Maespoeth makes for an interesting model, whilst being of relatively straightforward construction, hence the construction of a convincing model is in turn fairly simple.
The rolling stock can present the modeller with some quite vexing problems, like No. 3's wheels, which have spokes cast onto the fact of a blank disc, quite unlike anything else I have ever come across. No. 4 can be wheeled with the aid of Bonds own wheels, which I believe are still available from Bonds of Midhurst, Sussex. Collin Binnie's curly spoked wheels can solve the most pressing Corris problem up until now, namely that all Corris vehicles have curly spoked wheels. The six spoked-type is the nearest currently available to the Corris standard type.
At the time of writing I have just taken delivery of a Corris brake van from a friend in Wrexham, and a very nice piece of work it is too.
Any one for a Corris motorised 16mm horse to work the Ratgoed Tramway? Well believe it or not it has been done before, way back in the early 1960's by Tony Jenkins and his associates on the Abermarsham project. (A substantially more sophisticated 16mm version with correct gait and internal motor is on Ted Wade's drawing board at the final detail stage - Ed).
The Corris Railway owned very few open wagons of its own; however, the slate quarries had a vast number of private owner opens of different types. This, in itself, makes the Corris an interesting modelling problem.
I hope that I have kindled a little interest in this Welsh Light Railway. If you choose to model it, I hope it gives you as much pleasure in modelling as it has me in researching it.
However for all the narrow gauge modelling that is undertaken, there are by comparison few layouts produced showing a historically accurate model of a given prototype. One of the main reasons for this seems to stem from the fact that most modellers in narrow gauge prefer to regard it as a fun gauge rather than a serious subject of prototypical interest.
This to me and, I am sure, to a lot of others must seem a rather sad state of affairs, for although a number of accurate layouts have been produced in the past, few projects of late seem to be based on actual prototypes. This situation has led me to produce this article on one of the least well documented narrow gauge lines that once ran in mid-Wales.(Obviously he hasn't read his own excellent book, The Corris Railway Gemini Publishing 1977 – EJ.)
The Corris Railway (Corris, Machynlleth & River Dovey Tramroad) was a product of the slate industry of mid-Wales. Like the Ffestiniog it survived solely to transport slates and slabs from the slate quarries, running from Ratgoed and Aberllefenni to Machnynlleth, onward shipment being by the Cambrian Railways to customers both home and overseas.
Built to 2ft 3in gauge, the route of the original horse tramroad was surveyed by Thomas Nichols in 1850. However no move was made to build a tramroad until 1858 when a line was built from Aberllfenni and Ratgoed south through the market town of Machynlleth to Quey Ward near Derwenlas, where a jetty was built to serve the slate schooners that transported the product to the customers. Later, after the Cambrian arrived in the mid 1860's, the tramroad west of Machynlleth was abandoned and left to go derelict. At this time a consortium of quarry proprietors owned both the line and a number of the slate schooners in addition, as plant and equipment were expensive, far too expensive for any one person to be able to afford the heavy capital investment on their own.
By the late 1860's and early 1870's the quarry owners became increasingly concerned that the large amounts of slate being carried on their line were overtaxing its capacity, and began to look for better ways than using horses to haul the slate. As a result, in 1878 locomotives were introduced, and the permanent way was hastily brought up to standard with 401b steel flat bottom rail in place of the cast iron 151b bridge rail.
In 1880 a rail passenger service was introduced from Machynlleth to Corris, being subsequently extended to Aberllefenni in 1887. The early toadies resembled horse-drawn street cars of the period more than railway vehicles. Because of their poor riding characteristics Mr. Dix, the Railway's Manager, designed a bogie vehicle in 1890 which was subsequently built by The Falcon Works at Loughborough, along with three underframes which were then used for rebuilding some of the tram coaches into bogie vehicles. These were in turn backed up by a delivery of four bogie vehicles built by the Metropolitan Carriage & Wagon Company.
In the late 1890's two rebuilds were rebuilt with clerestory roofs to improve both their ventilation and lighting and very home-made they looked too, one having a roof lower than the other. The wagon fleet was quite interesting, with a whole host of different types of private owner open wagons from various quarries up the line, and the standard (or non-standard) Corris Rly I ton and 11 ton open wagons with their curly spoked wheels and end doors. The only van owned by the Company latterly was the brake van. This garden shed on wheels had a brake handle so small that you could quite happily jam your hand between the screw top and the van wall.
Locomotives came in the form of three 0-4-2Ts built originally as 0-4-0s by Falcons of Loughborough in 1878 and a Kerr Stuart, special 'Tattoo' Type 0-4-2T, built in 1921 to replace locomotives 1-2. However No. 2 and No. 3 were both rebuilt in 1920, and No. 2 remained in traffic despite the new replacement which was supposed to supplant it.
The main Stations on the line were at Machynlleth, Corris and Aberllefenni. However, small stations were opened in the late 1890's at Fridd Gate, Llwyngwern and Esgair-Geiliog. Later a halt opened at Garneddwen, between Corris and Aberllefenni. In addition to all of the stations described, request stops rather like bus stops were recognised by the Company as stopping places along the line.
The Company had been taken over by The Imperial Tramways Group in 1878 and remained in their hands until 1930 when it became part of the Gone Withered and Rusty Railway Company, otherwise known as The Great Western. This Company, lacking imaginative local management capable of retaining existing and developing new traffic, allowed the Railway, which despite its size had been kept in a very high standard of repair when under local control, to fall into a state of genteel decrepitude.
After closing the line to passengers on January 1st 1931 the Great Western allowed what remained to die a lingering death, until by 1940 the Railway and its traffic were but a shadow of its former self. This state of affairs was partly due to the world economic slump, partly to changed traffic patterns, and partly to bad "absentee landlord" management by the new owners. The line bumbled on through World War Two until in 1948, after Government takeover, the new owners at 222 Marylebone Road decided to face the inevitable and give the line a decent burial. In fact they were only endorsing a Great Western decision taken by default of maintenance and capital investment as far back as 1930. The Corris Railway duly closed to traffic on August 20th 1948; this was partly the result of a Management decision and partly because of the River Dovey which had a habit of flooding the bridge just north of Machynlleth had now seriously undermined the approach tracks on one side. After the final closure the track and steel upperwork of the Dovey Bridge were rapidly demolished. However the Ratgoed Tramway, which connected Aberllefenni Station with Ratgoed Slate Quarry, remained open to traffic until July 1952, the motive power being horses.
As I said at the start of this short article, it is only in recent times that narrow gauge modelling has become socially acceptable among the modelling masses. There was a time way back in the bad old days when N.G. layouts were put in hot sweaty corners of exhibitions, as Don Boreham found out to his dismay and vexation at a Central Hall Exhibition back in the early 1950's. For myself I intend to model the Corris in 16mm scale, "Yes, I know the purists will say that's wrong, it should be 14mm scale". Its only 1.5ins out either side of flange gauge and in any scale you have to go a hell of a long way before you notice the scale is out. (Shame on you; I'm sending a table of 14mm/l ft scale conversions by the next post - Ed).
I feel that this line will make a welcome change from the usual Festiniog or Talyllyn based layout one sees so often at model railway exhibitions.
Contrary to popular belief the Corris was not just like a second Talyllyn but in a neighbouring valley. The Corris was a more complete railway than the Talyllyn in every way. In its heyday, for a start, it was a real common-carrier railway as opposed to a slate tramway that by an accident of history happened to have steam locomotives. Today the roles are reversed and I am glad to say the Tallyllyn is the real railway.
The Corris railway offers a great deal to the modeller, not only from the rolling stock point of view, but also in affording the modeller an interesting selection of buildings and line side installations. In addition the Corris had a full set of signals which controlled most of the main line operations. Among the more interesting locations operationally was Corris itself, with its overall roof station and signalling controlled by a ground frame.
The Locomotive Depot at Maespoeth makes for an interesting model, whilst being of relatively straightforward construction, hence the construction of a convincing model is in turn fairly simple.
The rolling stock can present the modeller with some quite vexing problems, like No. 3's wheels, which have spokes cast onto the fact of a blank disc, quite unlike anything else I have ever come across. No. 4 can be wheeled with the aid of Bonds own wheels, which I believe are still available from Bonds of Midhurst, Sussex. Collin Binnie's curly spoked wheels can solve the most pressing Corris problem up until now, namely that all Corris vehicles have curly spoked wheels. The six spoked-type is the nearest currently available to the Corris standard type.
At the time of writing I have just taken delivery of a Corris brake van from a friend in Wrexham, and a very nice piece of work it is too.
Any one for a Corris motorised 16mm horse to work the Ratgoed Tramway? Well believe it or not it has been done before, way back in the early 1960's by Tony Jenkins and his associates on the Abermarsham project. (A substantially more sophisticated 16mm version with correct gait and internal motor is on Ted Wade's drawing board at the final detail stage - Ed).
The Corris Railway owned very few open wagons of its own; however, the slate quarries had a vast number of private owner opens of different types. This, in itself, makes the Corris an interesting modelling problem.
I hope that I have kindled a little interest in this Welsh Light Railway. If you choose to model it, I hope it gives you as much pleasure in modelling as it has me in researching it.