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I've seen rail chairs in a west Devon mining context referred to in
contemporary documents of the mid-C19 as shoes or slippers. We also have
rails cut into slots in sleepers, but these are bar rails, formed from
simple strips of wrought iron with no heads or feet. Typically, these
would be in 15-20 foot lengths, held at the joints by a cast iron chair,
but supported between by slots cut in the sleepers, which were set
correspondingly higher than the chaired ones. The rails typically measure
2" high by 1/2" thick.
This type of railway was used almost exclusively underground and for
surface connections between mine and dressing floors on mine sites only,
though I have seen beefier examples of about 3" x 3/4" which were used on
the quays at Morwellham, near Tavistock. Of course the point is that this
method was cheap, and if you didn't run heavy loads over it, would bear up
very well. Several mines in the Tamar Valley have in-situ examples to
about 2' gauge.
A good description of this sort of railway can be found in the English
Railways of Wrought Iron section of Railways in England, 1826 & 1827, by
Carl Von Oeynhausen & Heinrich Von Dechen, republished by the Newcomen
Society in 1971, Pp 60-62. I got a good working copy for about £15 off
Abebooks, and its well worth having for early industrial railways.
Robert Waterhouse
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Dr Peter Claughton,
Blaenpant Morfil, nr. Rosebush, Clynderwen, Pembrokeshire, Wales SA66 7RE.
Tel. +44 (0)1437 532578; Fax. +44 (0)1437 532921; Mobile +44 (0)7831 427599
Hon. University Fellow
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies (Centre for South
Western Historical Studies)
University of Exeter
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Co-owner - mining-history e-mail discussion list.
See http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/files/mining-history/ for details.
Mining History Pages - http://www.exeter.ac.uk/~pfclaugh/mhinf/
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