The Charnwood Forest Light Railway
Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 9:14 pm
Hello all,
The Charnwood Forest Light Railway is now my official title for the railway I'm working on. It makes my username a little superfluous but I don't want to start a new user name and loose all my posts!
My fictional back story has developed considerably. Those of you who have read my previous ramblings will know that I have to have an economic and engineering justification to make my line real for me and to give it purpose and reason. Those who read my Soar Valley Light Railway posts will have already read something of this and seen a first draft of the route. I've continued to work through this in my mind and on paper. I now have things sorted to the extent that I understand why the line might have been built and a fair idea of where. I have plotted it's course on a contoured plan. from this I've been able to work out areas of cut and fill and the depths of each. That allows me to put some logic in planning my garden railway to represent the line. It won't be a scale reproduction but I can now represent the railway in general. Once I tidy it up I'll post a new plan of the route (don't hold your breath!). Basically the new premise is a line running from Abbey Lane Leicester (opposite the park), running up and over the hill above Glenfield and down to Anstey. from there it follows the route previously posted (in the Soar Valley topic) with only minor detours. The stations and halts have altered a little too. They would now be:-
Leicester Abbey - terminus and small yard for general goods
Abbey Lane sidings - alongside the GCR and on a short branch, this would be for mineral traffic exchange primarily.
Somewhere between the two of these I need to work in the loco shed, works and carriage sidings.
Anstey - platform and a goods siding, possibly two. (no loop)
Cropston - platform and goods siding (no loop)
Swithland Halt - Platform only
Woodhouse - Platform, loop and goods siding. Branch to slate quarry (long siding really)
Beacon Halt - platform only
Oaks - Platform and siding
Shepshed - Platform and siding. Terminus of Public railway.
The line continues for about half a mile as a long siding to the Granite quarry (near Jct 23 of the M1).
The premise for the construction of the railway still centres around the imagined re-opening of the Swithland slate quarries on a commercial scale. There would be little justification for the railway continuing to Shepshed though (it's most expensive section to construct) for general traffic alone, nor even for granite traffic from the large quarry there; it was already served by the standard gauge Charnwood Forest Railway (by now part of the LNWR empire). To get round this I've imagined the discovery of further and more extensive deposits of Swithland slate on the southern edge of the granite quarry there, making the railway construction more worthwhile.
Even these premises would be unlikely to have stimulated construction of the railway on their own. An additional trigger was needed to make the construction seem plausible to me. When the GCR was planned it was intended that it would go around the reservoir being constructed at Swithland and pass close to the village of that name, before continuing to Anstey and entering the city of Leicester from a more north westerly direction. Lord Lanesborough had no intention of having the view from Swithland Hall spoiled by the new railway and it's trains and was influential enough in Parliament to block this route sending it further East and missing Anstey altogether. (Ansteys loss was Rothleys gain!). Leicester council took a very dim view of this, being very keen to get Anstey on the railway map to aid it's growth and development. Up to here the story is fact. Here's my imaginary twist. With both the GCR and Leicester council unhappy about these forced changesto the main line they entered negotiations to design and build a light railway to take advantage of the small but specialist mineral traffic and to put Anstey on the map in the process. The route favours narrow gauge to allow the line to hug the contours and to climb the hills, the quantities of traffic would be relatively small and so capacity would not need to be vast either. My view is that money from the council with some further support, partially financial but primarily technical, from the GC, would have been sufficient, along with local support, to finance the railway and operate it.
How the lines history developed I'm not sure yet. There would have certainly been a period of independent operation and it would probably have met it's end around the time of WW2. With the tie up to the GCR it's also quite likely that it may have been taken over at some stage by them or that it may have been grouped into the LNER. That bit still has to be worked out in my head!
More will follow here as all this surfaces, in the meantime, construction in the garden is really under way now. It will still be very slow, the terra forming will go on for some time yet, but some formation and structural work has now been completed and we're finally out of the ground! Further progress reports will be posted as and when but they won't be that frequent for the time being. Watch this space!
Andrew
The Charnwood Forest Light Railway is now my official title for the railway I'm working on. It makes my username a little superfluous but I don't want to start a new user name and loose all my posts!
My fictional back story has developed considerably. Those of you who have read my previous ramblings will know that I have to have an economic and engineering justification to make my line real for me and to give it purpose and reason. Those who read my Soar Valley Light Railway posts will have already read something of this and seen a first draft of the route. I've continued to work through this in my mind and on paper. I now have things sorted to the extent that I understand why the line might have been built and a fair idea of where. I have plotted it's course on a contoured plan. from this I've been able to work out areas of cut and fill and the depths of each. That allows me to put some logic in planning my garden railway to represent the line. It won't be a scale reproduction but I can now represent the railway in general. Once I tidy it up I'll post a new plan of the route (don't hold your breath!). Basically the new premise is a line running from Abbey Lane Leicester (opposite the park), running up and over the hill above Glenfield and down to Anstey. from there it follows the route previously posted (in the Soar Valley topic) with only minor detours. The stations and halts have altered a little too. They would now be:-
Leicester Abbey - terminus and small yard for general goods
Abbey Lane sidings - alongside the GCR and on a short branch, this would be for mineral traffic exchange primarily.
Somewhere between the two of these I need to work in the loco shed, works and carriage sidings.
Anstey - platform and a goods siding, possibly two. (no loop)
Cropston - platform and goods siding (no loop)
Swithland Halt - Platform only
Woodhouse - Platform, loop and goods siding. Branch to slate quarry (long siding really)
Beacon Halt - platform only
Oaks - Platform and siding
Shepshed - Platform and siding. Terminus of Public railway.
The line continues for about half a mile as a long siding to the Granite quarry (near Jct 23 of the M1).
The premise for the construction of the railway still centres around the imagined re-opening of the Swithland slate quarries on a commercial scale. There would be little justification for the railway continuing to Shepshed though (it's most expensive section to construct) for general traffic alone, nor even for granite traffic from the large quarry there; it was already served by the standard gauge Charnwood Forest Railway (by now part of the LNWR empire). To get round this I've imagined the discovery of further and more extensive deposits of Swithland slate on the southern edge of the granite quarry there, making the railway construction more worthwhile.
Even these premises would be unlikely to have stimulated construction of the railway on their own. An additional trigger was needed to make the construction seem plausible to me. When the GCR was planned it was intended that it would go around the reservoir being constructed at Swithland and pass close to the village of that name, before continuing to Anstey and entering the city of Leicester from a more north westerly direction. Lord Lanesborough had no intention of having the view from Swithland Hall spoiled by the new railway and it's trains and was influential enough in Parliament to block this route sending it further East and missing Anstey altogether. (Ansteys loss was Rothleys gain!). Leicester council took a very dim view of this, being very keen to get Anstey on the railway map to aid it's growth and development. Up to here the story is fact. Here's my imaginary twist. With both the GCR and Leicester council unhappy about these forced changesto the main line they entered negotiations to design and build a light railway to take advantage of the small but specialist mineral traffic and to put Anstey on the map in the process. The route favours narrow gauge to allow the line to hug the contours and to climb the hills, the quantities of traffic would be relatively small and so capacity would not need to be vast either. My view is that money from the council with some further support, partially financial but primarily technical, from the GC, would have been sufficient, along with local support, to finance the railway and operate it.
How the lines history developed I'm not sure yet. There would have certainly been a period of independent operation and it would probably have met it's end around the time of WW2. With the tie up to the GCR it's also quite likely that it may have been taken over at some stage by them or that it may have been grouped into the LNER. That bit still has to be worked out in my head!
More will follow here as all this surfaces, in the meantime, construction in the garden is really under way now. It will still be very slow, the terra forming will go on for some time yet, but some formation and structural work has now been completed and we're finally out of the ground! Further progress reports will be posted as and when but they won't be that frequent for the time being. Watch this space!
Andrew