The Thinking About Light Railways Before 1896. ...

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The Thinking About Light Railways before 1896 (and the 1896 Act of Parliament in the UK).

The featured image for this article shows a brand new standard-gauge locomotive – 0-6-4T Mersey Railway No. 1 ‘The Major’. It had not yet received its nameplates when it posed in ‘works grey’ at the Beyer, Peacock works at Manchester in 1885. The locomotive served on the Mersey Railway until that line decided on electrification. Four engines from the line, including ‘The Major’ found employment in Australia, on John Brown’s private light railway – the Richmond Vale Railway in New South Wales. The image comes from “Light Railways – Australia’s Magazine Industrial and Narrow Gauge Railways.” It is included here as an example of a standard gauge locomotive employed on an industrial line recognised as a light railway by ‘The Light Railway Research Society of Australia’. ... Not all ‘Light railways’ were narrow gauge, nor were their locomotives small 0-4-0T or 0-6-0T locomotives. [7]

W.J.K. Davies tells us that in the 1870s, it became apparent both in the UK and other countries that:

“many districts, while they would benefit immensely from the facilities afforded by a railway, just could not maintain a line built and operated to main line standards. And so, gradually, during the 1870’s and 1880’s, the concept of the light railway was formulated; a sub-standard means of bringing the advantages of rail transport into rural districts with the deliberate intention of opening them up and improving them. It must be made clear that this concept was different both from the idea of a standard gauge branch line which, although single track, was built and equipped in such things as signalling, stock and staffing to the same standards as the main lines, and from those narrow gauge lines already in existence which had been constructed in difficult country for a specialized purpose, normally the carriage of minerals; the best example of which was the Ffestiniog Railway, in Wales. These lines were not light railways in the true sense of the term.”

The Thinking About Light Railways before 1896 (and the 1896 Act of Parliament in the UK).

The featured image for this article shows a brand new standard-gauge locomotive – 0-6-4T Mersey Railway No. 1 ‘The Major’. It had not yet received its nameplates when it posed in …

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