7mm Welsh Narrow Gauge Quarry Railways in 7mm scale

[BetweenTheTunnels]

Great to see the pics of the Una/Britomart in their original setting. Not especially revenant, but you quote Cliff Thomas' book...

According to Cliff Thomas in 'Quarry Hunslets of North Wales' the names BRITOMART and UNA derive from Edmund Spencer's 'The Faerie Queene', in which Una was apparently a beautiful virgin representing truth and virtue.

... just a throw away comment, Cliff is a fantastic 009 modeller, and he tells me his home layout is to be featured in Model Rail shortly. Being fictional it may not be to everyone's taste, but the scenery is brilliant and the level of detailing well up to museum standard.

 

[PhilH]

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The Corris Railway have a problem with shortage of space at their Corris terminus and like many modellers have solved the problem with this rather neat traverser.

Photographed yesterday with their new Falcon replica 0-4-2ST built by Alan Keef Ltd. and delivered just over 12 months ago.


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[Dangerous Davies]

Thanks for sharing all these excellent photos Phil. Reading this thread has prompted me to find my copy of Cliff Thomas's Hunslet book, bought by me almost twenty years ago but only today did I begin reading it. How time flies!
Cheers
Dave

 

[LarryG]

Jeepers, I'd have gone with you Philip if I had known..... Is the traverser manual, ie: push over by the crew...?

 

[PhilH]

Thanks Phil, that’s very interesting.

The excavator looks exactly as I remember. It was surely a dragline as it had the drag winch arrangement (and the guide rollers) centrally on the front of the main body, roughly at driver‘s foot level. The tracked bogie is smaller than the main body, again as I recall.

I’m struggling a little to orient myself, it doesn’t appear quite as I recall! Is your top photo looking North East, with the pointed promontory to the right? The road/ramp was in the NW, and curved down to the left around the peninsula, could be the road in your photo, but it does not appear steep enough. There were two huts, quite close together, (about 18m down, which I recall to be a SE of the jetty, could be the huts in your photo) and then there was a hairpin right that took one to the plateau where the excavator (about 30m) was. If you search on Google maps, there appear to be a couple of buoys in the northern “bay”, and I think the excavator is the southern one - roughly in the middle of the bay.

I guess the excavator had moved down, and quite a long way to the left (NW) in your photo, by the time I visited.

View attachment 224693

I also recognise the old pumping house. It’s good to hear that it is being protected, but how that will take place, from a funding point of view, remains to be seen. There’s a story that there was a gallery between the two pits well below (200’?) the pump house in which a couple of early mixed gas divers pushed their luck too far. I can’t see it in your photo.

Talking of depth, I’d heard “600 feet” and “500 feet”, I do recall a post dive discussion with a pal who had got some info from the library. Our conclusion was that the bottom of the quarry was significantly below sea level. I recall he had a photocopy picture with a dump truck which despite being obviously a decent sized bit of kit, appeared very tiny indeed!

There may have been remains of the blondins when I was visiting, but I don’t recall them. The massive buttresses were (probably still are) very obvious.


thanks again
Simon

Simon,
Yes, my top photo in Post #19 is looking roughly North East, and it would have probably been taken from near the high tip revetment as marked on the Aerial Photo below:

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This was published in the aforementioned article in the Quarry Managers Journal in 1964, and still presumably their copyright. You can identify certain identical features in both photos. After 1964 the untopping operations in the North East corner of the pit and subsequent extraction of slate would have made changes including the provision of new roadways and disposal of waste material from that area.
There must have been a connection between the two pits and the bottom of the pump shaft to drain both pits and this may be the gallery to which you refer, but this must have been well down somewhere near the bottom of the pits. The ingress of water into these low lying pits was always a problem, exacerbated at times by flooding of the nearby River Llyfni. Various schemes were carried out to deepen and canalise the river, including one carried out in 1893-5 by contractors using a standard gauge Manning Wardle 0-4-0ST, but none were completely successful.
The 1953 6" OS map gives an altitude of 346 feet near the NW corner of the pit, so indeed the bottom would be well below sea level.

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I photographed a Blondin tower in 1965, this would be roughly in the position marked with a yellow cross in the aerial view. There were I believe a total of three across the pit, two with timber towers and one with a lattice steel tower, the other two appear in the background of the photo. No doubt they would have been demolished when the quarry closed but the foundations and remains of the winding engine houses probably remain. In the photo an empty slab wagon is attached below the pulley frame, known as a "ceffyl" (horse in Welsh) ready to be moved out along the carrier cable and lowered into the pit. Below the tower the wagons would be lowered onto a steel plate with guides to direct the wheels onto the rails. The transport of the wagons from the edge of the pit to the mill went through the entire range of possible propulsion over the years. First no doubt by horse; then steam initially with DeWinton locos and latterly with the Bagnall 0-4-0ST WENDY (since restored and now part of the Statfold Museum Collection); then petrol locomotives; then back to a horse until 1964; then a farm tractor; and latterly by a fork lift truck just lifting the wagons off the Blondin landings and carrying them to the mill.

 

[PhilH]

Jeepers, I'd have gone with you Philip if I had known..... Is the traverser manual, ie: push over by the crew...?

Yes Larry, the traverser is moved sideways manually by the loco crew.



Its locked in place by catches at each end (1 – on the photo above) engaging fittings on the concrete base (2). To move it instead of pushing the loco they place handles (3 – leaning against the fence) in the holes (4) at the end of the table. Rather a neat arrangement I think.

 

[Dave Holt]

Looks like one of the rollers is missing on the centre LH side bracket. Wonder if that's on purpose?
Dave.

 

[jonte]

I wonder which method is used to maintain electrical continuity between entry/exit rails and traverser?

 

[simond]

Looks like three-rail to me.

 

[Giles]

Looks like one of the rollers is missing on the centre LH side bracket. Wonder if that's on purpose?
Dave.

My guess is they discovered a slight rise in the concrete that that roller was trying to climb...

 

[Osgood]

My guess is they discovered a slight rise in the concrete that that roller was trying to climb...

My workaround for around that scenario would be to simply gas the angle off the baseplate in-situ, which will create a gap above the plate, and re-weld the angle back down onto the baseplate at the correct altitude.
Then again maybe the support angle is wandering off laterally and they've taken the roller off to skim a little off the sides to give some sideplay.

Not that I've ever been in that kind of situation before you understand...... all right then, maybe quite often if I've had anything to do with the design/manufacture

Looks a very neat little unit - and whoever welded the profiled plates onto the girder webs was making sure they installed it the right way round!

 

[PhilH]

Thinking of this subject from a layout point of view, as you may have gathered from the preceding, I'm more inclined towards the industrial - i.e. small 0‑4‑0s or similar locomotives and four wheeled wagons, rather than double Fairlies and Garretts on passenger trains. Considering the lack of suitable space for another permanent fixed layout any new layout would have to be small, portable and capable of being stored out of the way when not in use.

As it happens I recently bought new side and end panels for the bath, and the side panel came in a cardboard box 24" wide x 68" long - a reasonable size for a small "test" layout with a continuous run, gradients and small radius curves to see what would be possible, and this is the result:

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The box was reinforced inside with thin strips cut from a length of rough sawn 2"x 1" timber left over from a job outside, one strip down each side, one at each end and three others across the width.

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The raised curved trackbeds were cut from the end panel box and lifted with strips cut from the same in piles at a set interval, increasing the pile by one strip each time to get the gradient, which is about 1 in 20. The end curves are code 100 rail on copper clad sleepers, all secondhand and previously used, with 10" radius at one end and 9" radius at the other. I used two full lengths of new Peco 0n30 track between the curves and rather than cut up any more of the same I filled the gaps with 00 track that I've had in stock from goodness know when. The track was fixed down with small double sided adhesive foam pads cut into strips under some of the sleepers plus a few pins. So apart from the 0n30 track the only outlay has been a quantity of PVA adhesive, a few Peco track pins, some self adhesive foam pads and a few scalpel blades.

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I'm not sure about the figure 8 layout, although it does give an excuse for the gradients and you can 'play' with the Bachmann DCC sound using the controller so the locos chuff up the gradient and then coast down. I think the 1 in 20 gradient on the curves may be a little too severe, with the total of 5 wagons the locos seem to just about manage the climb, so more tests are required with longer trains.

When its served its purpose it will go in the recycling bin - a disposable layout !
(I still haven't fixed the bath panels ! )

 

[simond]

Oh, no, not the bin.

I built a fairly simple N gauge layout for my kids some years back. Whist initially excited, it soon became clear that railways were not their preferred hobbies and the layout was soon redundant. From memory, it was 5' x 2' or slightly smaller. It sold on eBay to a very happy Granddad. And whilst it didn't cover its costs, it was close!

I'm sure that when you've had enough, somebody will be delighted with it. Particularly if you provide scenery and ground cover.

 

[Scale7JB]

Ooh, you bought an Alice as well.

As a side note, Modelu sell figures to fit in the cabless hunslets and I think they’re pretty good.

JB.

 

[Osgood]

If only Scalextric had thought to incorporate a roadside tramway……

 

[simond]

Too big, 1/32nd. Ok for gauge 1 though.

Minic did roadway with inlaid track, but that was 1/72

 

[Paul_H]

I first visited PYO back in 1975 and most of the Blondins were still there and had wagons hanging in mid-air.



Remarkably one still remained upright in 2022 and I think still stands now.



I'm hoping to revisit later this month and take a lot more photos. Making a model of one is a very tempting prospect and could be a great exhibition piece.

 

[simond]

Certainly would, and some eye catching operation too

 

[LarryG]

At the country end of your 'Moving coal' layout, add a narrow gauge line to carry coal to an off-layout industrial premises. I realize it drives a coach & horses through the imaginary 'Somewhere around Wigan' aura, but.......

Hat, coat & door.....

 

[PhilH]

I first visited PYO back in 1975 and most of the Blondins were still there and had wagons hanging in mid-air.
Remarkably one still remained upright in 2022 and I think still stands now.

I'm hoping to revisit later this month and take a lot more photos. Making a model of one is a very tempting prospect and could be a great exhibition piece.

They are listed:
Pen-yr-Orsedd Quarry, Blondins and Associated Structures, Llandwrog, Gwynedd

But like the Dorothea beam engine, with no provisions for restoration, preservation or public access as far as I'm aware.