The Shropshire Minerals Light Railway

A lot of model railway enthusiasts say they model the railways they grew up with; maybe its a form of nostalgia. By rights then I should be modelling British Railways in the late 1970s and early 1980s - so that would be filthy plain blue DMUs, and ageing MK2 stock hauled by class 47s. However, I have been fascinated by narrow gauge steam from an early age; growing up in Cheshire I was introduced to the then re-emerging Great Little Trains of Wales in my formative years – a visit to the Llanberis Lake Railway in the mid 1970s particularly stands out. 

I started trying to make models of these quirky pint size trains in the early 1980s, initially in 009 then in 5.5mm/ft (1:55) scale under the tutelage of the late Malcolm Savage. Malcolm was extremely knowledgeable on all things steam and had an extensive library of narrow gauge interest, and suffered my teenage self to devour anything of interest. It was so I came across Eric Tonk’s slender volume on the Snailbeach District Railways (Industrial Railway Society 1974 ISBN 9780901096173) – its lack of detail on this highly individual railway compared to works about other similarly obscure railways left lots of questions to be answered. Some of these remain unanswered even after the publication of Andy Cuckson's much more definitive work (Twelveheads Press 2017 ISBN 978-0906294901) . 

The Shropshire Minerals Light Railway

The Snailbeach District Railways is one of the lesser known British narrow gauge lines, possibly because it never carried a fare paying passenger in its entire history. It is often wrongly considered an industrial line, but this isn’t strictly true as it was a fully functioning public common carrier railway established under an Act of Parliament. Indeed it would not have lasted until 1962 if it had served only the original lead industry as it changed its main purpose and customers at least twice during its 85 year history.

Built in 1876-7 the line was the work of the renown mining and railway engineer, Henry Dennis of Ruabon. He is probably better known for his re-working of the Glyn Valley Tramway, with which the Snailbeach shared a common gauge (2’4”) - well bar the odd 1/2 inch. The shared interest of Dennis meant that borrowed Snailbeach locos were in fact the first to work the Glyn Valley Tramway.

The Snailbeach was built to transport lead and other mineral ores from mines on the Stiperstones in mid Shropshire about 6 miles to a connection with the LNWR/GWR joint Minsterley branch at Pontesbury, and to take coal back in the opposite direction. The Act enabled two sections to be built – railway no.1 from Pontesbury to Crowsnest, with a spur to Snailbeach Mine (lead, spar and barytes); and railway no.2 from Crowsnest to Tankerville Mine. As usual the first section cost far more than the estimate, and the money ran out with only railway 1 built. 

A number of schemes were mooted to extend the railway to serve further mineral interests over the next 20 years. None got quite as far advanced as the final one – the Shropshire Minerals Light Railway.  This actually received parliamentary approval in 1891, unfortunately just as lead prices plummeted, and as a result no capital was ever raised or construction started. 

Had it been built it would have been a challenging railway to operate. Whereas the original SDR was a constant 1:40 down to Pontesbury this was in the direction of the principle load (smelted lead parcels and crushed mineral ores), with decreasing amounts of coal was worked back up grade. The SMLR however went over a summit with 1:30 grades in both directions before dividing and heading either into the Hope Valley to reach Roman Gravels Mine or curving right round the end of the Stiperstones ridge serving a number of mines almost reaching as far as the village of Habberly.

Pontesbury Sidings 

About 12 months ago I decided I would attempt to build a model of part of the SDR / SMLR. This "layout" is my second attempt to build a model of the Snailbeach, adopting the uniquely British scale of 009 (or if you are on the other side of the Atlantic 00n2 1/4). My first attempt was 25 years ago, and was eventually abandoned due to poor planning, over ambition and the bad running qualities of most of the locos (except perhaps Dennis but more of that perhaps another time). 

The present layout is based on a 6ft plywood shelf in my study, a space it will need to share interchangeably with other similar size layouts for my various other railway interests. The size was felt to be manageable in terms of relatively rapid completion by one person, and portable for exhibition or house moves.

Layout Design Elements

The model is based on the actual SDR Pontesbury Sidings, its not 100% prototypically accurate but uses the “layout design element” philosophy espoused by Tony Koester and other American Model Railroaders. This takes the key features of the prototype and combines with some modellers licence to give an overall impression of the place. In the case of Pontesbury Sidings key layout design elements include the narrow gauge being raised on a tree lined embankment, a distinctive girder bridge over the main road, and a timber transhipment trestle over a standard gauge siding, and in later years a similar arrangement for road lorries.

For size constraints arrangement of the sidings is both compressed and reduced in number. A run around loop is included, whereas in real life there was none until the tarring plant was installed in the 1930s, instead use was made of a kick back siding allowing the loco, which was always at the downhill end of a loaded train to escape; the loaded wagons being then run down to the transhipment areas by gravity. This is not really practical in model terms and the track arrangement has been altered to suit.

Next time - I'll talk about layout construction