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Cochise Great Old One Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Total posts: 1104 Location: Gwynedd, Wales Age: 58 Gender: Male |
 Posted: 30-10-2012 09:56 Post subject: |
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| A remarkable achievement, given that the loco had sat derelict halfway up a mountain for 20+ years and had been stripped for parts. I think even the wheels had gone. |
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rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
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| Cavynaut Skoumed!
Usually tired. Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Total posts: 1976 Location: Crouch Wailing. UK. Age: 56 Gender: Male |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 12-12-2012 20:36 Post subject: |
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The Golden Age of Steam Railways - 1. Small is Beautiful
Two-part documentary telling the remarkable story of a band of visionaries who rescued some of the little narrow gauge railways that once served Britain's industries. These small railways and the steam engines that ran on them were once the driving force of Britain's mines, quarries, factories and docks. Then, as they disappeared after 1945, volunteers set to work to bring the lines and the steam engines back to life and started a movement which spread throughout the world. Their home movies tell the story of how they helped millions reconnect with a past they thought had gone forever.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01p8w38/The_Golden_Age_of_Steam_Railways_Small_is_Beautiful/
Available until
9:59PM Mon, 24 Dec 2012 |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
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| amyasleigh Great Old One Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Total posts: 381 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 16-12-2012 23:14 Post subject: |
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| rynner2 wrote: | The Golden Age of Steam Railways - 1. Small is Beautiful
Two-part documentary telling the remarkable story of a band of visionaries who rescued some of the little narrow gauge railways that once served Britain's industries. These small railways and the steam engines that ran on them were once the driving force of Britain's mines, quarries, factories and docks. Then, as they disappeared after 1945, volunteers set to work to bring the lines and the steam engines back to life and started a movement which spread throughout the world. Their home movies tell the story of how they helped millions reconnect with a past they thought had gone forever.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01p8w38/The_Golden_Age_of_Steam_Railways_Small_is_Beautiful/
Available until
9:59PM Mon, 24 Dec 2012 |
Fascinating viewing and hearing, with much highly interesting film footage from 50-60-plus years back.
A big tribute is paid to the Talyllyn Railway, the world's first successful rail preservation undertaking, achieved by amateurs. I happened recently to be reading about a venture on the other side of the world which might have gained that title, a few years earlier than the Talyllyn (whose preservation regime commenced 1951); but that "wasn't to be".
The delightful narrow-gauge rail system which used to serve the island of Oahu -- principal island of Hawaii -- was mostly abandoned at the end of 1947, including the withdrawal of all its passenger services: the railway was in bad physical shape and heavily losing money, and thus had to all-but-close. A group of local railway enthusiasts tried to conserve a little of the island's rail scene. The railway company donated to the group, a couple of -- quite luxurious -- passenger carriages; which they started to operate, at somewhat irregular intervals, over some miles of still-active agricultural trackage owned by one of the island's cane sugar companies.
To haul the trains that they ran, the enthusiasts hired for each occasion, a locomotive from the sugar line's loco fleet: steam locos for the first couple of years, and subsequently diesels, after the sugar company finished with steam and went over to diesel power. The group called their operation by the wondrous name of the Hibiscus & Heliconia Short Line Railroad.
Regrettably, the whole thing came to grief when in 1954, the sugar firm abandoned its rail system in favour of road haulage. It appears that the enthusiast group had not sufficient numbers or "clout" -- and one rather suspects, not sufficient zeal -- to recover from this blow and try to transfer their activities to elsewhere on the island. They did not even manage to recover their two carriages and bring them into any kind of safekeeping; the sugar firm ultimately broke up the vehicles for scrap, where they stood. And the laurels for the world's first successful exercise in railway preservation went to Britain, not to Hawaii / USA. |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 17-01-2013 22:07 Post subject: |
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Railway buffs will want to watch this:
Locomotion: Dan Snow's History of Railways - Episode 1
From their beginnings as a primitive system of track-ways for coal carts in the early 18th century, railways quickly developed into the driving force behind the industrial revolution and the pivotal technology for modern Britain, and a connected world.
Rapid industrial growth during the early 19th century, coupled with the prospect of vast profits, drove inventors and entrepreneurs to develop steam locomotives, metal tracks and an array of daring tunnels, cuttings and bridges that created a nationwide system of railways in just 30 years.
George Stephenson's Liverpool and Manchester Railway became the model for future inter-city travel for the next century and his fast, reliable locomotive, The Rocket, began a quest for speed that has defined our modern world.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01pz9m7/Locomotion_Dan_Snows_History_of_Railways_Episode_1/
Available until
9:59PM Tue, 5 Feb 2013
But I was disappointed that there was no mention of Cornwall's part in the industrial revolution (complete with tramways for moving ore, etc), or the fact that the first steam [road) locos were built in Cornwall. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Murdoch#Steam_powered_locomotion
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Trevithick
| Quote: | | His most significant contribution was to the development of the first high pressure steam engine, he also built the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive. On 21 February 1804 the world's first locomotive-hauled railway journey took place as Trevithick's unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil in Wales |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 24-01-2013 22:30 Post subject: |
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What a blast from the past that was! Fascinating stuff about modelling, interspersed with many clips of real steam locos, and real-life rail history. The adverts on the (model) stations took me back to my childhood.
Back in the 50s, my schoolfriend Rick and I both had Triang train sets. We felt they were more realistic than Hornby, because they didn't have a third rail for electrical power. (This wasn't mentioned in the documentary.) Every so often we got the sets together to produce a bigger layout, which was great fun.
(Rick didn't have a father, and my father didn't smoke a pipe or take much interest in our trains, so we didn't match the stereotypes portrayed in the Hornby adverts.) |
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| amyasleigh Great Old One Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Total posts: 381 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 26-01-2013 11:58 Post subject: |
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| rynner2 wrote: |
What a blast from the past that was! Fascinating stuff about modelling, interspersed with many clips of real steam locos, and real-life rail history. The adverts on the (model) stations took me back to my childhood.
Back in the 50s, my schoolfriend Rick and I both had Triang train sets. We felt they were more realistic than Hornby, because they didn't have a third rail for electrical power. (This wasn't mentioned in the documentary.) Every so often we got the sets together to produce a bigger layout, which was great fun.
(Rick didn't have a father, and my father didn't smoke a pipe or take much interest in our trains, so we didn't match the stereotypes portrayed in the Hornby adverts.) |
Snap ! In the 50s, I was a Triang kid too, likewise finding two rails more realistic than the Hornby three. Later on, Triang unfortunately introduced a new kind of coupling for their locos and rolling stock, which they considered more efficient than its predecessor, but which I found over-large and grotesque and highly improbable-looking -- Hornby's couplings were small and unobtrusive, and would have been preferable for that reason. |
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| Cochise Great Old One Joined: 17 Jun 2011 Total posts: 1104 Location: Gwynedd, Wales Age: 58 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-01-2013 11:12 Post subject: |
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Agreed. I think the terrible Triang coupling (the tension lock one, which eventually became more or less standard for the UK model industry) was responsible for the 60's collapse in the model railway market. You couldn't shunt, uncoupling a wagon half the time pulled the whole train off the track and they looked hideous. They broke quite easily as well.
They caused me to change from Triang to HD (2-rail by then) but to this day I still haven't managed to eliminate the wretched things from my stock. |
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| amyasleigh Great Old One Joined: 03 Nov 2009 Total posts: 381 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 28-01-2013 22:25 Post subject: |
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| Cochise wrote: | Agreed. I think the terrible Triang coupling (the tension lock one, which eventually became more or less standard for the UK model industry) was responsible for the 60's collapse in the model railway market. You couldn't shunt, uncoupling a wagon half the time pulled the whole train off the track and they looked hideous. They broke quite easily as well.
They caused me to change from Triang to HD (2-rail by then) but to this day I still haven't managed to eliminate the wretched things from my stock. |
Re the Triang coupling -- glad I'm plainly by no means the only one. Had I gone further than I did, with the "model" side of the railway hobby; I'd have wanted to go for ultra-realistic: couplings (whether hook-and-chain, or automatic) probably would either have had to be made by me -- for which kind of stuff, I have zero talent -- or somehow custom-ordered. It's as well, likely, that I called it a day with modelling, in my mid-teens. |
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| Cavynaut Skoumed!
Usually tired. Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Total posts: 1976 Location: Crouch Wailing. UK. Age: 56 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 31-01-2013 20:35 Post subject: |
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| BBC2 have been showing a series at 1900 all this week on aspects of Welsh Railways. Tonights episode was particularly good...some great footage of steam hauled goods on the Crumlin viaduct. Well worth checking out if it's repeated or on i player. |
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| Cavynaut Skoumed!
Usually tired. Joined: 10 Apr 2003 Total posts: 1976 Location: Crouch Wailing. UK. Age: 56 Gender: Male |
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| rynner2 What a Cad!
Great Old One Joined: 13 Dec 2008 Total posts: 21362 Location: Under the moon Gender: Male |
| Posted: 01-02-2013 21:47 Post subject: |
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Dan Snow's Locomotion ignored Richard Trevithick, the inventor of the high pressure steam engine, but the Genius of Invention makes up for it.
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The Genius of Invention - 2. Speed
We take our ability to travel quickly and safely across the globe for granted. This episode reveals the fascinating chain of events that made such everyday marvels possible, telling the story of the handful of extraordinary inventors and inventions who helped build the modern world by making the miracle of powered transport mundane.
From the Rolls Royce aero-engine factory in Derby, Michael Mosley, Professor Mark Miodownik and Dr Cassie Newland tell the amazing story of three more of the greatest and most transformative inventions of all time, the steam locomotive, the internal combustion engine and the jet engine. Our experts explain how these inventions came about by sparks of inventive genius and steady incremental improvements hammered out in workshops. They separate myth from reality in the lives of the great inventors and celebrate some of the most remarkable stories in British history.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01qh4qs/The_Genius_of_Invention_Speed/
Available until
9:59PM Thu, 21 Feb 2013
Trevithick is covered from about 2 minutes in, to nineteen and a half minutes. (The story then moves on to Stephenson...) |
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