Garden Railway Forum

This is a project I started some time ago and had to set aside due to family responsibilties for a time. Now that I'm unpacking all my railway projects in readiness for completing them I'm very keen to get on with this one again.
For those of you that don't know the Ewings monorail system ran on a single ground level rail, BUT each locomotive and item of rolling stock also had a large balance wheel that could run along the ground and prevent it from tipping over. The Ewings system was used only in India and then only on the one line, but it was apparently quite successful. Do the Google thing if you want to know more because it is quite fascinating.

After years of building in metal I much prefer to work in wood and card these days and this loco was very much a test piece when I started building it. I shall unpack it from its storage box and take some more photos soon because quite a bit more has been done to it since these present photos were taken.

Small Ewings system wagon in process of being built.

What a wonderful project.
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Great work Annie - made me smile as I was laid off today!

Keep the posts coming, more of the little dog please

I was actually lucky enough to ride on that in 1996........... the quality of the ride depends on what The Big Wheel runs on - at the Delhi museum it's a concrete strip.............

MDLR:74253 wrote:I was actually lucky enough to ride on that in 1996........... the quality of the ride depends on what The Big Wheel runs on - at the Delhi museum it's a concrete strip.............

Now that would have been a ride that I would have enjoyed too

I am taking liberties with the design though by building mine with a walking beam engine complete with huge flywheel. It's going to be a fairly slow moving freight hauler due to all the gearing, but that's Ok. The driving wheels are Meccano pulley wheels and the Big Wheel is a Mamod flywheel which is just perfect for the job.
If everything seems to work out alright I might just build a monorail line out in the garden and build further rolling stock to go with the loco. It's not such a silly prototype for a garden line actually. Only one rail to lay and nothing to go out of gauge. Pointwork is very simple to build as well.





Some experiments were done at first with the works Baguley IC loco and these may get revisited so as to get a second loco Ewings loco on the rails fairly quickly. Plainly the Ewings system was such a big success in the Kotanga Valley that it lasted into the IC era.

First test chassis.




The Baguley in its original form.

I remember reading on the forum that someone had been asking how to make tractor type seats. This is the one I made for the Baguley from a scrap of aluminium and I think it only took me all of 20 minutes to do.

Hi Annie,

You might find these photographs interesting. Many years ago I got interested in the Patiala Monorail system. Most of its 50 plus miles used animal or human traction only the new section which was laid with heavier rail used O&K locomotives. However there was at least one petrol driven engine? I made a monorail coach using Mamod componets with the intention of modifying one of their locomoives to pull it but I never got around to doing it.

Regards Tony.

Weirdly enough, there was a modern-image successor to that kind of monorail. Tbe "Brockhouse Uniline" was developed in the 50s as a cheap fixed guided transit system for "the colonies". It featured a centre rail for guidance only on a narrow concrete roadway, all the rail vehicles having conventional road wheels with inflatable rubber tyres. I think the idea was that spares would be easier to come by, and the better grip would allow for steeper grades- the reduced haulage capacity consequent to the higher friction would not have been an economic constraint for the type of line under construction. The prototype was built and operated on a short demonstration line somewhere in 3rd rail country, and a friend tells me he's seen the derelict remains from a carriage window.

http://www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/ ... se-uniline

EDIT: Found more information

http://www.cambrianmodels.co.uk/esxdetls.html

Thanks for the pictures Tony, they are going to be useful when it comes to building rolling stock. Apparently there was a tea plantation somewhere that used the Ewings system as well, but I haven't been able to find out anymore about it.
I remember seeing that Ewings converted Mamod coach somewhere before online and wondered at the time if a loco had been converted to go with it. It could still be a good project for the future should I stumble across some suitable live steam bits.

Tommy, I'd never heard of the Brockhouse Uniline before and to see it in action on that video clip was amazing. It would certainly make for an interesting model, though I do wonder about where to get all those tyres...... unless Meccano tyres could be used..... Hum, now where did I put that box will all my Meccano in it?

This is interesting, Ewings monorail systems were being discussed on this forum too.

http://www.minimumgauge.info/viewtopic. ... 8d7015e6a2

And the patent for the Ewings system can be found here....... http://www.google.com/patents?id=RHNuAA ... 32&f=false

And....... http://www.google.com/patents/US742978? ... 78&f=false

This model of a monorail loco and coach in the Warsaw Railway Museum is very interesting. It's similar to the Larmanjat tramway built in Paris and Portugal.

Look at the second patent I was reminded of an experiment done in the 1920 in South African by putting a 2ft gauge bogie instead of the front wheels on steam wagons.Thay pulled trains on lightly laid track.
Also I have found a photo of a Wallis & Steevens of Basingstoke traction engine with a monorail bogie under the front.You could make an engine like this out of a Mamod traction engine?

spooner:74617 wrote:Look at the second patent I was reminded of an experiment done in the 1920 in South African by putting a 2ft gauge bogie instead of the front wheels on steam wagons.Thay pulled trains on lightly laid track.
Also I have found a photo of a Wallis & Steevens of Basingstoke traction engine with a monorail bogie under the front.You could make an engine like this out of a Mamod traction engine?

Indeed I could sir  :D

It's just finding one now at a price I can afford.

Amongst all my unpacking of large scale train things the Ewings loco I was building has come to light. The chimney is a 10mm scale item and is only a place holder by the way.




As it's built to 7/8th scale and quite chunky I can't really make it a part of my indoor Kotanga Tramway layout, but then on the other hand I always thought that if I was going to take a railway into the garden then a Ewings monorail line would have a lot going for it. I have the beginnings of a 7/8th scale tramway coach as well and I think it would be a lot of fun to convert this to the Ewings system too.

At the moment I'm working on clearing off my workbench in my bedroom (neglected and buried for the past three years!) as well as finding all my model making tools and spare parts and fittings & etc. Once I've done that I will be settling down to repairing and completing my large scale models and this Ewings loco is high on the list. If nothing else I want to see it in motion and crawling its way along a length of rail.

Annie, that is just brilliant, I love your 'train' of thought and the use of materials. I could do that in plastic but would find it more difficult in your choice of materials. I can see now why you have visited the AWNUTS site, this is just the kind of thing they enjoy.
The Wallis and Stevens traction engine looks great but would be impossible to reverse. I'm sure you could make it work on a continuous circuit though.

Thanks Peter When properly thought out and built up wood and card models in this scale are very strong. There are one or two tricks I've learned along the way as you might have guessed.

The annoying thing though is that I did have a Mamod traction engine in need of a tidy up as well as a spare boiler and other bits and had to sell them when I got ill. If I could find something suitable for wheels though I suppose I could build up an electrically powered model in wood and cardboard. First things first though as I must finish off this one before thinking about building another

Just went through the whole post again, your workman photos are crying out for word captions from the crew

Can you start a monthly competition on here of guess what they are saying please...