A 3ft 6in Gauge Steam Tramway in Heywood, Greater Manchester.

[rogerfarnworth]

Until I read the February 1963 edition of 'The Railway Magazine', I had no idea that steam trams served boroughs in the Manchester conurbation. .........

https://rogerfarnworth.com/2021/05/29/a ... chester-uk

John R. Prentice says that "the Manchester, Bury, Rochdale and Oldham Steam Tramways Co. Ltd. (MBRO, founded c.1883) became the second largest steam tramway operator in Britain with over 90 tram engines, 80 double-deck passenger trailers and 30 miles of routes. Of all these, two-thirds of stock and track were narrow gauge (3ft 6ins), including the section between Bury and Rochdale, through Heywood.

[captrees]

Brilliant find, Roger.

Thanks for links to great pics.





In the days when drivers wore bowler hats!

[Mountain]

It reminds me of these narrow gauge tram kits....


https://www.smallbrookstudio.uk/store/7 ... p236779337

[rogerfarnworth]

Very similar, although the roof detail is different!

[Mountain]

The chimney on those kits can be positioned where one wants it. I was thinking if Corgi or other suitable unpowered tramcars to tow... It looks like they had a few designs. Whatever they could get I guess!

Have you seen the unique trams they once had at Neath in Wales?

[rogerfarnworth]

No I have not! What was unique about them?

[Mountain]

Something to do with how they were powered.

[Mountain]

Gas powered trams....

http://www.tramwaybadgesandbuttons.com/ ... ge710.html

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/sit ... /tram6.jpg

It looks like the photo was taken during the years of WW1, hence the window tape.

Here is the only surviving gas tram of this type known in existance the world.

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/10110

http://www.britishtramsonline.co.uk/news/?p=17468

(I gave the examples in link form so one can see the sites I found them on)

[rogerfarnworth]

Mountain, thank you. Really interesting!

[Lysander]

A near-identical steam-hauled tramway ran between Stony Stratford and Wolverton Roger.

Tony

[Mountain]

Mountain, thank you. Really interesting!

I am glad you like it.

There were a few rather interesting railway, tramway and waggonway systems in these parts. Neath Abbey which was close had one of the earliest locomotive works and was one of the main rivals to Stephenson, though rival is ot the correct word to use, as they shared information in those days as it was more about getting their designs to work... But both were influenced by the news of Travithicks machines, one of which had been built to run on rails and trialled on the Penydarren tramroad which was only a few mountain ranges away from Neath.

I found out about these Neath trams as I was looking to find prototypes of street tramway systems that did not use an overhead electricity supply. It was just an excuse to run a possible tram on my layout in the future, as I love the look of trams, but I don't really want to have an overhead system. (I have not gone down the tram route. I was just looking as I love the look of the Smallbrook Studio 7mm NG tramcars).
I had also back then caught site of a newspaper article about the old tram found in someones garden, though I don't think I was paying a lot of attention until I happened to later see the article online and it struck a chord.

[rogerfarnworth]

I came across the Penydarren Tramroad when doing some research about the Forest of Dean tramways.

[Mountain]

It is interesting how much is interlinked as technology was shared and how the people wanted what others had as practical solutions to their problems...

One of the issues they faced was trying to get traction to the wheels as in wheel to rail traction because some of those early tramways were made for horses who could go up gradients as steep as a 1 in 4, though they were not usually that steep as the horses would only pull a single waggon at a time on that gradient. But they were still pretty steep in places. With the early locomotives, it was not about speed. It was about spreading the locomotives weight to avoid breaking rails and getting up the steep hills.
Todays railways have been significe tly eased, as some of those early tramroad systems would be layed up and down gulleys and over embankments out of convenience... If a horse could manage it, they had no reason to change.
So one can understand why they were thinking of a toothed type of design between the wheels and the track in the early days, though they soon realized it was easier to build bridges and cut through the terrain to ease the gradients then pay out to alter the whole system to have the additional expense of toothed rails.

I remember reading an account of the very early steam locomotives, where they would unload to get the locomotive to pull the waggons empty over a brief but steep bank which the line went up and over (And down the other side) and re-load the waggons on the other side, and the techniques they used for the locomotive to get over such a steep mound. It is interesting stuff.
Some early locomotives were used as moveable stationary steam pumps as their owners found them more useful, and it is not because they did not work as locomotives, but it was that they had horses to pull waggons or people to push them, but they had a far more desperate need to kep the mines from flooding then they had in the movement of the ore, so it all depends on the owners needs at the time.

Another interesting thing is that some of the early locomotives were designed with wide wheel flanges which could be used on both plateway rails and edge rails so systems that were converting from one to the other could run them on both systems at the same time. I read of one system which was once edgerail being converted to plateway as plateway had the advantage of flangeless wheels so waggons could be rolled off the rails and rolled to where they were needed (Plateways advantage was that it served as mulitpurpose on and off rail systems for horsedrawn waggons), but then later found as they rarely needed to use them off the rails and advancements in edgerails progressed, they converted their entire system back to edgerails.
History is interesting.