The Heybridge Railway, 1889 to 1913

[Chas Levin]

I'm guessing that the current price tag reflects the widespread (near-total?) use of concrete though?

Actually, I'd assumed sleepers were produced domestically, from Good Old British Oak (™️). Even if that's wasn't so in more recent times, would it have been the case between 1889 and 1913?

 

[Phil O]

A lot of modern sleepers and timbers are Australian Jarrah, a hardwood that doesn't need treating.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Definitely time for a back story!

Heybridge Basin has always been an isolated community, and in the early days of the railway the staff here found themselves with a little too much time on their hands. Historical records of the railway here are of course sketchy and often anecdotal, but it seems the loco crews developed a habit of taking extended lunch breaks in the Mill Beach Hotel (this became The Ship Inn in 1906).

Needless to say, something had to go wrong sooner or later, and one afternoon when really no-one should have been anywhere near the controls of a steam locomotive, it did. A wagonload of agricultural equipment bound for export arrived from Heybridge, with instructions for it to be loaded onto adjacent barge immediately. The Passed Cleaner (who had drunk the least beer) took the regulator of ‘Blackwater’ which promptly jammed wide open. In the ensuing pandemonium, the train dislodged and passed the single sleeper chained across the end of the siding, and deposited said wagon and its contents into the Basin.

The staff involved were suspended without pay for a fortnight. During the second week, they were provided with picks and shovels and forty railway sleepers, and left to get on with the job of building a more substantial stop. It is the results of their efforts we see here, modelled shortly after its completion. As far as I know, E H Bentall never lost another item into the Navigation.

 

[AJC]

I found this drawing on the web, from the Midland Railway Study Centre:

https://www.midlandrailwaystudycentre.org.uk/documents/RFB28524-075.jpg

OK, it’s specifically the Midland Railway spec. But it specifies ‘old sleepers’ and that it should be tarred.

My feeling is used sleepers would be normal, as they would be cheaper and perfectly adequate for the job (though no longer good enough for use in track). Where do you get them? Buy them second hand, of course — just as you would today. The larger companies must have had plenty of sleepers taken out of track because of deterioration — but still with a value for other uses.

Tarring too I suspect would be standard.

Yes, I don’t see why you’d waste something new on this sort of application - fence posts, platelayers’ huts and so on have chair imprints on them, the Ffestiniog and other railways used half sleepers, rarely new. The rail on light railways was often second hand too (as I’m sure it was for buffer stops).

Adam

 

[Mike W]

Actually, I'd assumed sleepers were produced domestically, from Good Old British Oak (™️). Even if that's wasn't so in more recent times, would it have been the case between 1889 and 1913?

Going back to my school days I remember doing a project on the railways' use of timber and a great deal came from south America. Some railways seem to have owned, or part owned forrestry companies there. There was an article in Railway Magazine about it probbaly just pre Great War.

Mike

 

[Richard Gawler]

Today proved to be a school day at Albury (and `I didn't get sent into a corner) - I learned from one of the Love Lane crew (might it have been Professor Birch?) that at one time an import duty was imposed on timber over 9ft length, so sleepers were coming into the country at 8ft 11" to avoid the duty!

Yes. From Gordon, W J "Our Home Railways", published Frederick Warne London in 1910:

• Sleepers were being imported by 1910;
• At least one railway company (the Great Western) was treating its sleepers in-house;
• The holes for chairs might have been drilled by the railway company, or perhaps earlier in the production process e.g. at the sawmill.

I am also looking at Pike, J "Track", published by Sutton Publishing in Stroud in 2001.

The way I see things,

• A railway using (predominantly) spiked FB rails would be using sleepers without holes pre-drilled for chairs;
• I have put the date of the extension to Heybridge Basin at 1894, so while my imaginary scheme might have set precedents for later light railways it would be wrong to suppose it is typical of later lines;
• A wooden sleeper can last around 15 to 18 years (Pike), and the first part of the railway, opened to Heybridge five years earlier, would not yet have old sleepers to discard;
• British sleepers were (at unspecified times) of ash and elm (Pike) and the finish I have put on my model does resemble elm, though entirely by luck not judgement;
• A tiny concern like the Heybridge Railway would not have machinery to put preservative onto sleepers.

If the sleepers were bought in secondhand, the buffer stop might have been built with the chair impressions facing inwards. If the sleepers were bought in new, the happless builders might have tarred the bottom few feet but not the whole lengths.

Before I write much more or alter my model, I want to find out when sleeper-built buffer stops came into use. If it was after the Great War (perhaps a shortage of steel?) then I am scuppered anyway.

 

[40057]

Yes. From Gordon, W J "Our Home Railways", published Frederick Warne London in 1910:

View attachment 214324

View attachment 214323

• Sleepers were being imported by 1910;
• At least one railway company (the Great Western) was treating its sleepers in-house;
• The holes for chairs might have been drilled by the railway company, or perhaps earlier in the production process e.g. at the sawmill.

I am also looking at Pike, J "Track", published by Sutton Publishing in Stroud in 2001.

The way I see things,

• A railway using (predominantly) spiked FB rails would be using sleepers without holes pre-drilled for chairs;
• I have put the date of the extension to Heybridge Basin at 1894, so while my imaginary scheme might have set precendents for later light railways it would be wrong to suppose it is typical of later lines;
• A wooden sleeper can last around 15 to 18 years (Pike), and the first part of the railway, opened to Heybridge five years earlier, would not yet have old sleepers to discard;
• British sleepers were (at unspecified times) of ash and elm (Pike) and the finish I have put on my model does resemble elm, though entirely by luck not judgement;
• A tiny concern like the Heybridge Railway would not have machinery to put preservative onto sleepers;
• I haven't seen or found details of a buffer stop built from FB rail, and I think such a construction would be much more difficult than using BH rail.

If the sleepers were bought in secondhand, the buffer stop might have been built with the chair impressions facing inwards. If the sleepers were bought in new, the happless builders might have tarred the bottom few feet but not the whole lengths.

Before I write much more or alter my model, I want to find out when sleeper-built buffer stops came into use. If it was after the Great War (perhaps a shortage of steel?) then I am scuppered anyway.

The Midland Railway drawing I posted has the date missing — but the other complete drawings (that look to be numbered in the same series) shown with it are dated 1884.

 

[Richard Gawler]

I took my buffer stop to Albury where I had more discussions parallel with Saturday's posts here.

I do think the use of new materials is both plausible, because new timber passed through the Heybridge Basin throughout the commercial life of the Navigation; and reasonable, because this would be easier to source than second hand materials.

My main mistake was probably to imagine the infill would be something free-draining (like ballast) while it ought to be whatever material was to hand. I don't think I will go as far as to turf the job over as per the MR drawing but I can glue something else in when I come to work up the ground surfaces.


I just took this photo in my garden, in the shade away from the early morning sunshine, and I like this. The pinkish tinge on the plywood base is the way it looks in daylight. Thank you for the many thoughts through the last eighteen posts, but I have done all I want to do to this before I bed it onto a layout.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Aggregates were extracted near Heybridge Basin but I still don't know what they were. I am guessing sand and gravel as found throughout the middle of Essex.

Would almost certainly have been sand and gravel, either from the buried river channels which criss-crossed the area or from estuarial / ancient beach deposits.
This material generally drains very well, unless it contains too much fine sand / silt / clay (which might be the case with material coming from further east where the rivers slowed and lighter particles dropped out.

As-dug, often rounded, aggregate was maybe not the best ballasting material compared to angular 4" down rock or slag due to insufficient large (+ 4") stone to help resist lateral movement but it certainly drained well, and was the staple ballasting material on light railways wherever deposits were found.

In the case of the Middy the (main?) source was just a short distance east of where construction started at Haughley station. where a ballast pit was dug.
The Heybridge Rly would have had to pay more for imported material if local aggregate was not used.

I doubt I will ever discover what came out of the aggregate workings near Heybridge, but I did take a couple of photos in the Gipping Valley (Suffolk) last week.




These deposits are beside some excavations now full of water, near Pipps Ford Lock.

I wonder, is this the sort of stuff we are talking about for ballast?

 

[Osgood]

Plausible Deniability mode ON: I'm fairly confident we are.

That material is quite angular, probably not long out of the glacier or at least heavily frosted - good for track stability.
The Heybridge material may have been beach deposit in which case rounded and not quite so stable.
But as you will be gluing the ballast down it is somewhat academic!



Shallow deposits were often found whilst excavating for track foundations which were then exploited for ballast.
The smaller East Anglian railways (well, their contractors) made good use of this resource.

On the one hand, you have been a complete distraction to my efforts to modify baseboards this morning as - on top of digging out drill rig photos - I'm still racking my brains trying to think which book has the superb picture of a flat-bottom rail-built buffer stop.
On the other hand, I've just done a WT search for Grainge & Hodder hoping to get an idea of their traverser board details (having costed out decent ply and fittings and my time) - and you can shortly expect a

 

[Richard Gawler]

I have finally realised, searches for "Essex aggregate extraction" give me pictures of conveyor belts and dumper trucks; searches for "Essex geology" tell me what is down there

The web site of The Essex Field Club is particularly helpful:

• River terrace sands, gravels and brick earth on Northey, Osea and immediately north of Heybridge;
• River and esturial alluvium along the rivers Chelmer and Bllackwater
• Kesgrave sands and gravels (from the ancient course of the River Thames) and glacial gravel north and south of these rivers.

Source:
https://www.essexfieldclub.org.uk/resource/Solid & drift map of Essex

I am thinking budgie grit, fine sand and a sieve. I have some crushed limestone from Proses, but the more rounded style of the Woodland Scenics ballast products (crushed nut shells I have read) might be a better ingredient.

The ballast for the railway has been a sticking point for ages, I can see what I need to do.

 

[Alan]

30 or so years ago the small lake behind the Blackwater Sailing Club, about 100 yards down stream from the Basin, was dug out for gravel.

 

[Osgood]

...The ballast for the railway has been a sticking point for ages, I can see what I need to do.

And with the right adhesive, it could hopefully be a permanent sticking point.

 

[Chas Levin]

Of course, I'd forgotten the role that the British Empire would have played in the timber industry, and the very different economics of the times... Interesting stuff.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Staying with the ballast for a moment, we know that most of the coastal and foreign shipping arriving at Heybridge Basin was bringing bulk cargos (mostly coal and timber) for carriage by the Navigation to Chelmsford. What we don't know is the nature and quantities of any goods these ships took back home. So if they were returning unladen, I guess they would be carrying some local sand and gravel as ballast, and this would help to explain the large extent of the aggregate operations nearby.

Conversely, some foreign ships might be arriving nearly empty, to take British exports back home. An obvious candidate is machinery from E H Bentall, but perhaps there were finished timber products too.


Brown and Sons (who accounted for much of the timber imports) were Government Contractors and thus qualified to be exporting finished products to the Empire. In which case, incoming ships arriving empty would be dumping their ballast at Colliers Reach or nearby; and some of this ballast could end up used in building the railway.

My gut feeling is to go for simplicity and restrict the railway's ballast to local aggregates; but the option for foreign materials is there.

My thanks go to @Rob R who gave me the genesis of these ideas at Albury on Saturday.

 

[Yorkshire Dave]

So if they were returning unladen, I guess they would be carrying some local sand and gravel as ballast, and this would help to explain the large extent of the aggregate operations nearby.

Cargo ships generally don't sail unladen, no cargo = no revenue. Single load coasters such as colliers may be different.

Coasters may have unloaded at Heybridge and either took on a new load there as suggested or sailed around the corner so to speak to a nearby port to pick up a new cargo.

 

[Richard Gawler]

Cargo ships generally don't sail unladen, no cargo = no revenue. Single load coasters such as colliers may be different.

According to Historic England, "the trade in 'King Coal' was so profitable that there was no need for a return cargo from London, although passengers also took ship there to return to the Tyne".

From an account of passenger travel from Newcastle to London on collier brigs,
The Perils of the Passenger | Historic England

This being before the coming of the railways.

 

[James Spooner]

According to Historic England, "the trade in 'King Coal' was so profitable that there was no need for a return cargo from London, although passengers also took ship there to return to the Tyne".

From an account of passenger travel from Newcastle to London on collier brigs,
The Perils of the Passenger | Historic England

This being before the coming of the railways.

At Porthmadog there is an island just outside the harbour, called ballast bank. Most of it was created by dumping ballast from Hamburg when there was no return traffic for the slates shipped from Porthmadog to Hamburg (a big trade after the great fire of Hamburg in 1848). It is said that, in the nineteenth century the Ffestiniog Railway also used some of that ballast for its track, so these things were not unknown.

Nigel

 

[Alan]

As an addtion if you don't already know the cut out on the left hand side downstream of the river beyond the sailing club is know as Ballast Hole where mud, gravel?? was loaded on to empty ship sailing down river to give them some sort of ballast otherwise they would have been departing from Maldon and Heybridge if unloaded in a fairly unstable way.

 

[PhilH]

I've been looking for suitable ballast for my narrow gauge layout, something a bit more varied in colour and size than the usual ballast aggregate, and obtained this from a local river:

​

Its been passed through a sieve, so the maximum size of the sample is probably just under 1mm, and there are fines in it although it doesn't show in the sample. If you have the opportunity its probably worth scouting round the area your model is based in for any natural material, old gravel pits, river banks, etc. The inside of a curve in a river is the most likely place to find deposits of such material.

Mainline ballast is 2" nominal size, or at least that's what Penmaenmawr Quarry was supplying to BR in the 1960s when I worked there. Whether the specification has changed since or not I don't know.