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108 pages

English

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Steam railways have always captured the public's imagination. Even from the first stirrings of the mineral lines in the early 1800s through to the heyday of the Railway Age, steam engines kept and continue to keep their fascination. The delight is that around the British Isles is a wide range of working, restored steam railways. Every size and type is represented and it is these railways that primarily feature in this book, providing a real, solid picture of life and transport as it was. The author Stan Yorke explains the development of the steam railway and how the various parts worked. Illustrated by over 100 photographs, and aided by his son Trevor's superb drawings, the book is divided into four sections: the history; the track, signalling and building; the locomotives and rolling stock; and finally a review of the restored railway scene today, including a selection of sites to visit.

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History

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Publié par	Countryside Books
Date de parution	05 novembre 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781846748424
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	4 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0324€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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STEAM RAILWAYS EXPLAINED
Steam, Oil & Locomotion

STAN YORKE

COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS
NEWBURY BERKSHIRE
First published 2007
© Stan Yorke, 2007
Reprinted 2008, 2010
All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher:
COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS
3 Catherine Road
Newbury, Berkshire
To view our complete range of books, please visit us at
www.countrysidebooks.co.uk
ISBN 978 1 84674 012 1
Photographs by the author Illustrations by Trevor Yorke
Designed by Peter Davies, Nautilus Design
Produced through MRM Associates Ltd., Reading
Typeset by CJWT Solutions, St Helens
Printed by Information Press, Oxford
C ONTENTS
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
SECTION I

A B RIEF H ISTORY
Chapter 1
I N T HE B EGINNING
Chapter 2
T HE G LORIOUS Y EARS
SECTION II

W HERE S HALL W E G O ?
Chapter 3
S URVEYING AND P LANNING THE R OUTE
Chapter 4
K EEPING A L EVEL
Chapter 5
T HE R OADWAY
Chapter 6
W HO G OES F IRST ?
SECTION III

T HE W ONDERFUL W HEEL
Chapter 7
T HE M IGHTY L OCOMOTIVE
Chapter 8
M AKING I T P AY
Chapter 9
T HE R OMANCE E NDS
SECTION IV

R EFERENCE
S ITES T O V ISIT
G LOSSARY
I NDEX
Acknowledgements

T he writing of a book such as this calls upon the knowledge of a great number of people, such is the diversity of the various components that make up our railways. I would like to place on record my thanks to the dozens of volunteers and employees of the various preserved railways who answered endless questions with both patience and enthusiasm. I have listed below those railways that feature along with their picture caption abbreviations.
Bluebell Railway
(BR)
Bodmin and Wenford Railway
(BWR)
Buckinghamshire Railway Centre
(BRC)
Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway
(CPRR)
Churnet Valley Railway
(CVR)
Crich Tramway Village
(CTV)
Dartmoor Railway
(DR)
Dean Forest Railway
(DFR)
Didcot Railway Centre
(DRC)
East Lancashire Railway
(ELR)
Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway
(EBASR)
Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway
(GWR)
Great Central Railway
(GCR)
Keighley and Worth Valley Railway
(KWVR)
Kent and East Sussex Railway
(KESR)
Lavender Line
(LL)
Llangollen Railway
(LR)
Mid-Hants Railway
(MHR)
Midland Railway – Butterley
(MR)
The Museum of Science and Industry
(MSI)
National Railway Museum – York
(NRMY)
National Railway Museum – Shildon
(NRMS)
Nene Valley Railway
(NVR)
North Yorkshire Moors Railway
(NYMR)
Paignton and Dartmouth Steam Railway
(PDSR)
Peak Rail
(PR)
Severn Valley Railway
(SVR)
South Devon Railway
(SDR)
Swanage Railway
(SR)
Welsh Highland Railway
(WHR)
West Somerset Railway
(WSR)
Introduction

T he word ‘railway’ probably conjures up some of the widest ranges of images and emotions known to man. To some, it’s a memory of far-off sunny holidays, of adventure and exploration; to many, it is sadly a daily fight with crowds and bad timekeeping. Yet, for most of us, the railways and, in particular, steam engines, will always hold a fascination.
Having waded through dozens of railway books it seems, though, as with so many industrial subjects, you have to choose between children’s books or deep, detailed tomes which hardly constitute easy reading. This book has been written in an attempt to bridge that gap. As with all the Explained series, the idea is to go beyond the characters involved in a part of our history, to look at how the subject worked, and how and why it was created. This knowledge will hopefully engender greater pleasure when visiting today’s lovingly restored railways and indeed may even lighten the frustration of sitting in a stationary train at eight o’clock in the morning!

General overview of the common features of railways.
The book is split into four sections. In Section I we take a brief journey back in time to see the origins of our railway system. Here we meet such names as Stephenson and Brunel, and get a glimpse of the effects the early railways had on our society. Sections II and III consider in detail the way the railways were built and run – the main ‘explaining’ part of the book. We look at all the static items like the track and the stations before, in Section III , we get to the engines and the rolling stock. It is difficult to resist running straight into the engines as they represent the core image of earlier railways but, as I hope you will discover, so much else is essential before a train can actually move.
Section IV describes the scene today, in particular, the twenty or so restored and working steam railways that exist around our country. At this juncture I must put in a word of warning. The railways have a very complicated history featuring a great number of developments and inventions. For every example I give there are bound to be different versions, depending on the region or the designer. This is particularly so when looking at engines, which engender passionate loyalty in enthusiasts. In a modest book like this the author obviously has to take considerable liberties and omit vast amounts of detail. As always, I have tried to avoid long-winded and over-technical terms – this is a book to ignite your interest in railways, not a manual on becoming a railway engineer!
Stan Yorke

Steam, hot oil and hard work. Preparing two restored GWR locomotives for a day’s work on the Severn Valley Railway.
S ECTION I

A B RIEF H ISTORY
C HAPTER 1
In The Beginning

L ike so many aspects of the Industrial Revolution, our railways developed surprisingly slowly. Man had long realised that the wheel enables heavy loads to be moved easily; he had also observed that the smoother the roadway the easier was the task. In England this knowledge was applied some time in the 1600s by laying down flat wooden planks secured to stone blocks set into the ground. A wooden peg fitted to the wagon would run between the ‘rails’ acting as the guide. These early wooden tracks were used only for wagons pushed by men. Soon wagonways using oak rails, some 4 inches square, pinned to stones set in ballast, became standard. Wagons carrying about 30 cwt were used, each being pulled by a horse. These rails only lasted about a year and to combat the wear the top surface was covered by a cast iron plate. In this form these wagonways spread all over the country, moving coal and stones down to the nearest navigable water and carrying ever heavier loads.

FIG 1.1: Typical early wooden wagon with cast wheels and flanges. This restored wagon from the Stratford and Moreton Railway is standing on a section of the original cast iron fish-belly track. Opened in 1826, this horse-drawn line worked for some 60 years.

FIG 1.2: Sketch of fish-belly track.
It seems that from very early on in England the guiding peg was replaced by wheels that had flanges which kept the wagon on the rails. As iron became more available, cast iron ‘edge’ rails were made, usually only around 3 ft in length, with the joints supported by a sleeper or stone block. To give greater strength, the central, unsupported area was made deeper in what were known as fish-bellied rail. By the 1820s, wrought iron rail was being made in 15 ft (4.5m) lengths but, as these rails were rolled from red-hot iron, rather than cast into a mould, it was not easy to alter the cross-section; so the fish-belly shape was abandoned and instead more sleepers or stone blocks were used. The rail was held in a chair by wooden wedges, a system that lasted until the Second World War. An alternative rail was also developed, sometimes referred to as tram plateway. This rail was L-shaped and again held to stone blocks. The wagon wheels, without any flanges, now ran on the bottom of the rail and possibly because they appeared simpler and needed less precision, these plateways spread very fast. By the 1820s, though, the plateways were seen as less sturdy and prone to clogging up with dirt and loose stones and the edge rail became standard for new works, though some horse-drawn plateways lasted into the 20th century.

FIG 1.3: L-shaped tram plateway, showing how the plain wheels had to run over any stones or debris.
The wheels, originally all wood, were soon being made with iron rims, which greatly extended their life and, by the 1820s, the whole wheel was cast from iron.
The steam engine had been developed in the early 1700s but these first examples were, strictly speaking, atmospheric engines. Their power came from developing a partial vacuum and allowing the natural atmospheric pressure to provide the power stroke. Using steam at pressures above a few pounds per square inch (psi) was thought to be very dangerous; indeed, with the early ironwork this was partially true. By the end of the 18th century, though, men like Richard Trevithick were experimenting with true steam engines, which used the steam pressure to push a piston inside a cylinder. His first machines were steam-driven road vehicles but, no matter how he tried, the roads of the day simply were not good enough to support the heavy machines. Samuel Homfray owned an ironworks in Pen-y-Darren in South Wales and had bought a share in Trevithick’s patents; he also had a 9-mile plateway down to the Glamorganshire Canal. Thus, the world’s first steam locomotive was born, moving a 10-ton load without trouble, but alas its weight proved too much for the cast iron plateway, which frequently broke. A second locomotive was tried on the wagonway of the Wylem colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne but, though it was able to do the job, its weight again proved too much for the crude track.

FIG 1.4: A working reconstruction of Richard Trevithick’s Pen-Y-Darren locomotive on display in the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. The driver worked at the left-hand end whilst the fireman rode on a separate ‘tender’ on the right.
Meanwhile, the road system was being improved and turnpike roads, where the tolls paid for the improvements, were spreading, as were t