RAILWAY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETY

EARLY RAILWAY GROUP Occasional Paper 255

[ editor’s note: this paper is in reply to a query in Circular 37: “ rails. The following enquiry is from Michael Gillingham via Wendy Freer: I wondered if you would be able to give me any leads on some of my investigations re the cast iron fish belly rails that are said to have been used on the tram road at Nanpantan. It is said that this was the first time edge rails were used! …”

And see the related notes on the Kidderminster rail in Circular 37 and Railway & Canal Historical Society, Early Railway Group Occasional Paper [ERG OP]256, Rowan Patel, ‘ Edge Rails: their use at Belvoir Castle and elsewhere’.

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The Leicester Navigationʼs Forest Line: a myth debunked

Michael Lewis

One of the least successful projects of the Canal Mania was the Charnwood Forest Line of the Leicester Navigation, which was intended to bring coal from pits around Coleorton to the main waterway at Loughborough. It was to be a hybrid transport route, with railways on the steeper stretches at each end but a canal on the level central portion. “The bodies of the Trams were made to lift off, or to be placed on their wheels, by means of cranes” and stowed in canal boats1: an early instance of containerisation. And not only was the system a fiasco, but there are few early railways whose story has been more befogged by misinformation and misinterpretation. Although the general outline was elucidated in an invaluable paper of 19552, until recently the nature of the rails has remained obscure, for none has been found in the field.

The first published record, by John Farey who saw the railways when derelict in 1807, seems reliable. He describes the rails as “bars flat at top.” But the waters were soon muddied. In 1824 Robert Stevenson wrote in his Highland Essays,

The first Public Railway Company seems to have been instituted at Loughborough in the year 1789 under the direction of the late Mr [1745-1814]. Here this eminent engineer introduced the Edge-rail, the upper part of which was of an elliptical figure, with flanges upon the wheels to guide them upon the tracks of the road; for hitherto the Plate or broad rail, under various forms, is understood to have been solely in use.3

1 John Farey, General View of the Agriculture of Derbyshire (London 1817), vol. 3, 379. 2 Robert Abbott, ‘The railways of the Leicester Navigation Company,’ Trans. Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society 31 (1955), 51-61. 3 Robert Stevenson, ‘Notes by Mr Stevenson, in reference to the preceding Essays,’ Prize Essays and 1

Much of this was copied by Wood in his first edition of 18254, and is simply wrong. Ironically, it did not originate with Stevenson but with , William's second son (1781-1826), whom Stevenson consulted in connection with his forthcoming Highland Essays. Jessop told him on 15 September 1823,

The first public Railway was the Loughborough which was began in 1790 under the direction of Mr Wm Jessop (my father) – The Rails were of Cast Iron of the description called Edge rails / the flanch being on the wheel, the tops of the Rails were elliptical that they might be always clean & run with as little obstruction as possible; but there [sic] advantages were more than counterbalanced by the destruction of the wheels which running on a small surface were worn out into grooves5.

In a later letter, too, Josias mentioned “the Loughbroʼ which was made by the Leicester Canal Co . . . in 1789”6.

All this, despite the seemingly reliable source, is thick with errors. The claim that here was the first public railway has little to commend it, and in any event is hardly relevant to this paper. Edge rails, mostly in wood, of course long preceded plate rails. The elliptical head will call for discussion later. And the date of 1789 has no leg to stand on, because it was only in 1791 that the Forest Line received its Act and William Jessop was appointed its engineer, and only in 1794 that the railways were ready for traffic. Before long, too, Jessopʼs and Stevensonʼs description of the rail was fundamentally misread. Their “elliptical figure,” which really referred to the transverse section of the rail head – i.e. a convex running surface to reduce friction – was transferred to the longitudinal elevation; in other words, the rail was turned into a fish-belly. Thus Hebert in 1836 said,

In 1789, Mr Jessop introduced a cast iron edge-rail in the public road at Loughborough, the upper surface of which was flat, and the under of an elliptical shape.7

So the myth was begun; and in the late nineteenth century it was not only perpetuated but intensified by Clement Stretton. He was early railwaysʼ counterpart to Charles Dawson who fabricated, amongst other antiquities, the infamous Piltdown Man, a fraud that was not exposed for 41 years. Although even now the lesson is not yet fully learned, most historians distrust and even discount anything that emanates from Strettonʼs pen. He reiterated the supposed date of the Loughborough line by quoting a report of Jessopʼs of 1790-1 that recommended the intended Belvoir Castle railway “to be in every way similar to the Loughborough and Nanpantan Edge-rail-way which I laid down in 1789, and which has been working nearly two years”8. This is no mere mistake but an outright fiction, for the Belvoir Castle railway was designed only in 1813 and completed in 18159. It was laid with fish-bellies of distinctive design with elaborate interlocking joints, which we now call the Jessop rail. As far as we know it was first used here and, William Jessop senior having died in 1814 after a long decline, was probably the brainchild of his third son William junior (c.1783-1852).

Transactions of the Highland Society 6 (1824), 132. 4 Nicholas Wood, A Practical Treatise on Rail-roads (London 1825), 48. 5 Martyn Taylor-Cockayne, ‘Josias Jessop's Railways Observed’, ERG OP 223, 2012), 2. 6 Taylor-Cockayne 2012, 4 7 Luke Hebert, The Engineerʼs and Mechanicʼs Encyclopaedia (London 1836), 381. 8 C. E. Stretton, The history of the Belvoir Castle edge-railway (pamphlet 1893). Not seen by me, but quoted by C. F. Dendy Marshall, A History of British Railways down to 1830 (London 1938), 51. 9 Charles E. Lee (Railway Magazine, June 1938, 391) corrected the traditional date of the Belvoir but not of the Forest Line. 2

Belvoir Castle rail, 1815 (Narrow Gauge Railway Museum)

Elsewhere Stretton adds that the Loughborough rails were cast-iron, 3ft long, and laid at 4ft 8½in gauge, and gives the closer date of June 178910; of which four “facts” only the first and the second are correct. In 1892, moreover, Stretton presented the Science Museum with a fish-belly rail from his collection which he claimed to be from Loughborough11. It is indeed of Jessop type but, though worn on the head, it is identical in all respects to the Belvoir rail. Both weigh about 40 lb. It is beyond belief that, in an age of rapid technical experimentation and progress, this sophisticated type preceded by four years the earliest authenticated fish-belly rail (Walker near Newcastle of 1798, of very simple design), and that it lay wholly fallow and wholly unchanged between 1794 when the Forest Line was ready for traffic and 1815 when the Belvoir opened. In all probability Strettonʼs rail came from Belvoir, and it is certainly yet another red herring.

Evidence for the true story was put forward in 1979 by Hadfield and Skempton12, but they failed to appreciate it. The contract dated 6 July 1792 between the Leicester Navigation Company and Pinkertons, its contractors for the railways, includes this specification, here published in full for the first time.

The ground to be formed into Declivities by cutting and banking as marked upon the Sections with red lines. Where the Ground requires cutting the bottom to be Twelve feet wide the sides sloped in the proportion of one foot horizontal to one foot perpendicular. The Bankings to be made fifteen feet top and the sides sloped Eighteen Inches horizontal to one foot perpendicular. A trench to be dug under each rail two feet wide and two feet deep and filled with Stone closely laid together of such Quality as may be approved by the Engineer. In the embankments or any other Parts where the foundation is loose it must be well rammed and consolidated before the Stone is laid in. Upon this Stone work the Sleepers or cross bars are to be laid well and firmly bedded at the Distance of three feet from middle to middle. They are to be of good Heart of Oak, Six feet in length, seven inches wide and three inches thick, with a pad or piece Twelve Inches in length and of the same scantling laid on each end of the Sleepers and pinned together with strong Oak Pins, upon which the Cast Iron Rails are to be spiked down as shown in the Plan and Section, and each iron rail to be firmly underpinned with proper stone upon the Foundation. The Rails of Iron to be cast in lengths of three feet. Each length weighing Twenty eight Pounds and of such quality as may be approved of by the Engineer (for the form of the Rail a Model will be hereafter given.). The Spaces between the Sleepers and Rails to be filled up with Stone properly broken, and laid in a convex form . . . Turn off Rails or passing Places to be laid at an average distance of Four hundred yards from each other middle and

10 C. E. Stretton, The history of the Loughborough and Nanpantan edge-rail-way (pamphlet 1889). Not seen by me, but quoted by Dendy Marshall 1938, 50. 11 E. A Forward, Catalogue of the Collections in the Science Museum: Land Transport IV: Railway Construction and Working (London 1927), Inv. No. 1892-107. Stretton gave other specimens to the Loughborough Library Museum (now Leicestershire Museums): Fred Hartley, “Early iron railways and plateways in Leicestershire,” Early Railways 5 (Clare 2014), 262. 12 C Hadfield & AW Skempton, William Jessop, Engineer (Newton Abbot, 1979), 171-2. 3

middle; the length of each passing Place Twenty five yards. The trenches and stone foundations for those passing places to be only Eighteen Inches wide and Eighteen Inches deep . . . The Banks and Spoil Banks to be neatly trimmed and covered with good Soil which is to be wheeled back and saved for that Purpose13.

The drawings have not survived, but the arrangement has been reconstructed by Fred Hartley as below.

Reconstruction of Forest Line railway 1792 (Hartley 2014, 262)

The rails weighed 28 lb/yd or 0.78 lb/in. With iron at 0.256 lb/in3, they had an average cross section of 3.04in2. If the section were (for reasons to be explained) trapezoidal, and if the dimensions were (for the sake of example) 2in wide on top and 2⅝in at bottom, the depth would be 1.3in. Hadfield and Skempton considered this sort of scenario14, but rejected it because the “strength would be quite inadequate.” Instead they postulated a T section. But this is quite unparalleled for this date and, far from being spiked down, it would demand chairs, on which the specification is wholly silent.

It is true that a bar averaging 2.3125in wide by 1.3in deep is a thoroughly unsatisfactory shape for load carrying, but it has close parallels for precisely this period. This takes us to the area where all- iron rails were pioneered. At Coalbrookdale in 1767, as is well known, flat cast-iron plates were first laid on top of wooden rails in order to reduce wear rather than to provide strength. The next logical step, to do away with the wooden rails altogether and rely solely on the iron, was perhaps taken nearby in Shropshire by 177615, and certainly by 1787-8 when such bar rails were being cast at Plymouth Ironworks at Merthyr Tydfil. In South Wales there followed, over the next ten years, many variations on the theme, normally more than 3ft in length and from 1792 with a greater depth than width, as was proper for strength. At first they were carried on wooden sleepers, but from 1792 on stone blocks. Two types are particularly relevant to us, both of trapezoidal section. One is from Blaenavon, originally 6ft long, 2¼in wide on top and 2⅞in at bottom, and 1¼in deep. Given these dimensions, its weight, stated by John van Laun to be about 35 lb/yd, was really 29½ lb/yd, very close to the 28 lb/yd in Leicestershire. The other bar, from a Penydarren pit, is 5ft long, 2½in wide on top and 2⅞in at bottom, and 1½in deep, weighing about 37 lb/yd and still on its wooden sleepers16. Both are remarkably similar to the bar rail postulated for the Forest Line.

13 From an unspecified document in TNA RAIL 848/, transcript given to me by Charles Hadfield, 12 Dec 1967. 14 Hadfield and Skempton 1979, 172. 15 Neil Clarke, ‘John Wilkinsonʼs railway at Willey,’ Early Railways 4 (Sudbury 2010), 87-8. 16 John van Laun, Early Limestone Railways (London 2001), 203, 171. 4

Blaenavon bar rail, c.1791 (van Laun 2001, 203)

None of these Welsh bars had the convex running surfaces found (if we believe Josias Jessop) on the Loughborough rails. But it is worth noting that Blaenavon also used pads in conjunction with sleepers, albeit under their ends rather than on top of them. Their function on the Forest Line was presumably to reduce the unsupported span of the rails to 2ft which, in conjunction with packing of ballast under the rail base, would mitigate the undeniable fragility of the iron. The point is that if such a bar rail worked reasonably well in Wales – as it clearly did – it would work in Leicestershire. It is a far cry from the Belvoir rail of 1815 with its fish belly and its tall thin web terminating at the foot in a large flange, all features which show an understanding of the most efficient distribution of metal and illustrate the huge advance in beam theory made during the intervening twenty years17.

This brings Josias Jessopʼs description of the Forest Lineʼs rails into serious question. When it was opened he was only 13 years old, and quite possibly he never even saw them but merely assumed that they were those he was familiar with: Belvoir-like with a narrow convex head, which rings far less true than Fareyʼs “bars flat at top.” This seems the most likely explanation of his historically implausible statement. At all events, Josiasʼ memory was far from perfect: he claimed, for example, to have assisted Outram in 1798-9 in surveying the tramroad “from Merthyr Tydfil to Newport” on which the Penydarren locomotive ran18. What he really meant was the Sirhowy Tramroad from Tredegar to Newport, surveyed not by Outram himself but by his assistant John Hodgkinson in 1801. On top of failing memory, he himself admitted that early railways “were not at any time an object of interest to me & I am now too much confined at home to have the means of acquiring the knowledge.”19 This was written two years before his death at a quite early age, and perhaps, being house-bound, he was already in his final illness.

There is a final nail to drive into the coffin of Josias Jessopʼs description. In 1832, long after the Forest Line rails were lifted, the company still had 15,000 of them unsold on its hands. They were 3ft long and had “a larger portion in contact with the wheel” than those of the Liverpool & Manchester20. The running surface of L&M rails was 2.25in wide, that of Belvoir rails 1.325in. Enough said.

17 For the evolution of beam theory and the variety of rails in this inventive period see M JT Lewis, ‘Bar to fish-belly: the evolution of the cast-iron edge rail,’ Early Railways 2 (London 2003), 102-117. 18 Taylor-Cockayne 2012, 4 19 Taylor-Cockayne 2012, 3 20 Hadfield and Skempton 1979, 289 n.13 5

Since the specification for the Forest Line does not state how far the pads were to be placed from the sleeper ends, the rail gauge cannot even be guessed. At Blaenavon it was probably 3ft 8in.

Then there is the question of technology transfer. How did Jessop in the Midlands come to hear of practice in far-off Wales in the days when the diffusion of knowledge between coalfields was still relatively slow? An obvious if hypothetical answer presents itself. Jessop had been engineer for the , with (his partner in the new Butterley Ironworks) as superintendent and with the Dadfords (father and sons) and Thomas Sheasby as contractors. In January 1791 Sheasby and the Dadfords threw up their contract and moved permanently to South Wales, where they built many and connecting railways and must have become quickly familiar with the local fashion for bar rails. While we do not know whether they and Jessop parted amicably, it is entirely possible that they remained in correspondence.

Interestingly, at just the time when Jessop was planning the Forest Line, Outram was planning the which fed the Derby Canal21. Unlike the Leicester line, it had flanged rails, which set Outram on the path to becoming the unrivalled champion of plateways; but the two partners must – though Outram was almost twenty years the younger – have consulted each other extensively. Outramʼs initial thinking for the in October 1792 was wooden rails plated Coalbrookdale- fashion with cast iron. In 1793 he changed his preference to plate rails (cast, like those of the Forest Line, by Joseph Butler of Wingerworth and also, coincidentally or not, 28 lb in weight) on wooden sleepers. Within two years the rail weight was increased to 36 lb, and later still the wooden sleepers were replaced with stone blocks, which Outram had first tried on the Peak Forest Tramroad in 1795. These blocks were another innovation of South Wales, in use there from 1792. In 1796, moreover, Outram experimented on the Crich limestone railway with cast-iron sleepers, a device first heard of at Ebbw Vale in 1794. It seems highly likely that it was the Dadfords and Sheasby who brought both blocks and iron sleepers to Outramʼs notice, just as we suggested they brought the bar rail to Jessopʼs. As on the Forest Line, coal was carried in boxes that were craned from railway wheels to boats on the Derby Canal.

Despite the many similarities in their beginnings, the two lines differed wildly in their later careers. Whereas the Little Eaton flourished and did not close until 1908, the Forest Line was a white elephant whose traffic, always insignificant, dried up in 1799. But the myths long remained unchallenged. “This line,” Dendy Marshall pointed out in 1938, “has been frequently spoken of as the prototype of the modern railway.” Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. Its influence on the future was negligible, and even its spawned no imitators in England.

My thanks to Rowan Patel for invaluable insights.

March 2020

21 Rowan Patel, ‘The early development of the Outram-pattern 1793-1796’, Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, 39 (Nov 2018), 26-37. 6