Light Railway Handbook by RW Kidner

$40.00

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The Light Railway Handbook by RW Kidner

Hard Cover

178 pages

A collected edition including handbooks 1-6, 8 A summary of the history and equipment of light railways constructed under the Acs of 1864 and 1896, and other public narrow gauge and lighly laid standard gauge lines.

There was a special charm about the five small railways owned and managed by the late Colonel H. F. Stephens. There was, for instance, the charm of genial extravagance. At a time when the normal traffic of the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Railway required only the leisurely attention of one locomotive, there were in fact twelve : three, in L.M.S. colours, in the running shed, one in a satellite erection, and eight more in varying states of corruption concealed in the surrounding boskage.

There can, however, be no doubting the ingenuity of Colonel Stephens. An ordinary railway, faced with a chronically infirm Melverley Viaduct (it had collapsed during the period between 1880 and 1911 when the line was derelict), would have spent time and money attending to the foundations. Not so the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire. Miraculously there were produced a 3-ton locomotive and an L.C.C. horse tramcar, a light combination which could be relied upon not to strain the timbers, and which, slightly modified, outlived the more orthodox passenger trains on this line.

There was, of course, the historical charm, too. It is a solemn thought that the West Sussex Railway Chichester, when already a saddle-tank of fourteen summers, was injured in a collision on the Great Western Railway in 1861. Adaptwas another strong point of these railways. The arrival of the last East-Kent train on Saturdays at Shepherdswell was a masterpiece of efficiency. The locomotive turned aside and ultimately reached the locomotive shed down by the S.R. spur ; meanwhile the coach brakes were released, and it glided down into the station. The guard leaped out, bearing a tobacco tin containing the week's " take " of tickets, and in about thirty seconds the station was shut up for the week-The train was stopped just beyond the Golgotha tunnel, and the coach uncoupled

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