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Fayle's Tramway - Author Chris Legg The new edition, with a few updates,
has 168 pages, 225 illustrations and a full colour cover.

available usual outlets and www.moorebooks.co.uk £16.00m + P&P

Description
 For much of the twentieth century a small train periodically stopped the
traffic on the main road from Wareham to Swanage and for many people this
was the only manifestation of an important local industry. Ball clay had
been extracted from Purbeck since the sixteenth century but it was the
beginning of the nineteenth that saw the start of serious exploitation.
Benjamin Fayle built Dorset’s first railway in 1806 to get his clay to the
coast and over the years the needs of transport saw a number of very
individual railways until the 1990s.

This book is the result of the author’s lifelong interest in the industry
and his detailed personal knowledge of the mines and railways. It tells of
the many aspects of clay extraction and mining, processing and weathering,
tramways, horses, locomotives and rolling stock, family connections and
personalities, merchants and miners, accidents and rescues, education and
the school train, shipping and the effects of war. The author’s friendship
with the miners, managers and their families makes this a very people
orientated story.
The railway story is taken from the historic plateway of 1806 through the
variety of lines, using six different gauges, that saw use for nearly two
centuries; including the Middlebere Tramway, the Goathorn Tramway and the
Norden and Goathorn Railway. It includes an account of the famous Russell’s
time in Dorset, before its return home to Wales. Many photographs and
drawings are published for the first time.

Mike

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