The Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (UK)

[rogerfarnworth]

Trafalgar Colliery - I have enjoyed reviewing the available documentation about Trafalgar Colliery in the Forest of Dean. I hope this post is of interest.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/09/24/trafalgar-colliery-and-railway

...A narrow-gauge tramway (Brain’s Tramway) was built soon after the opening of the colliery to connect to the Great Western Railway’s Forest of Dean Branch at Bilson [1] The single line of 2ft 7.5in gauge utilised edge rails laid on wooden sleepers and ran east from the colliery, turning south-east at Laymoor, and terminated 1.5 miles away at interchange sidings at Bilson. It would appear that the authorisation for its construction was a Crown licence for ‘a road or tramway 15 feet broad’ dated May 1862. The date the line was opened for traffic is unknown as, although the first of three locomotives used on the tramway was built in 1869, it is possible that it may have been horse worked before this date...

[rogerfarnworth]

I have recently encountered two small books, both of which are facsimile editions of much older books. The first is a 19th century guide to the Forest of Dean for early holiday makers. The second provides a guide to the various coal mines in the Forest. ...

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/10/05/two-pocket-books-about-the-forest-of-dean

A Week’s Holiday in the Forest of Dean
...There are references throughout the text to the railways in the Forest.…

Fine Forest of Dean Coal
...The booklet contains a short history of mining in the Forest, clarifies the status of Free Miners, explains the arrangement of the different coal measures underground....

[rogerfarnworth]

The Bream Heritage Walk, the Oakwood Tramway and The Flour Mill Ltd

The Forest of Dean continues to be one of my favourites places. In 2020 we, once again, stayed there in the first week of September.

This post returns to two earlier themes from the Forest.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/09/0...k-the-oakwood-tramway-and-flour-mill-colliery

On 1st September 2020 we followed a sign-posted circular walk which started in the centre of the village of Bream on the Southwest side of the Forest. The route was planned with the support of the Big Lottery Heritage Fund and featured a series of different heritage locations around the village. ............. The walk took us first along the route of the China Bottom Branch of the Oakwood Tramway which was covered in an earlier post about the tramways in the Forest (http://rogerfarnworth.com/2017/10/02/oakwood-and-dikes-tramways).

[rogerfarnworth]

This short addendum to my most recent post provides photographs with comments which were taken at the site of Flour Mill Colliery where The Flour Mill Ltd undertakes heavy engineering work maintaining and refurbishing steam locomotives.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/09/04/the-flour-mill-colliery-and-the-flour-mill-ltd-again

[rogerfarnworth]

Darkhill Ironworks, Titanic Steelworks and associated railways and tramways. .....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2020/09/12/the-forest-of-dean-milkwall-tramway-at-dark-hill

In early September 2020, while staying in Bream in the Forest of Dean we walked around the Titanic Steel Works and the Dark Hill Ironworks of father and son David and Robert Mushet. These two establishments sit adjacent to what was the Coleford branch of the Severn and Wye Joint Railway. They were also served, in its time, by the Milkwall branch of Severn and Wye Tramway.

[pjm20]

Thanks for posting all these track studies, these are quite interesting railroads!

[rogerfarnworth]

Humphrey Household included a short chapter about the Forest in his 1984 book about the railways of Gloucestershire in the 1920s

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2021/09/17/the-forest-of-dean-tramways-and-railways-an-addendum

While on holiday in the Forest of Dean in September 2021, I picked up a secondhand copy of "Gloucestershire Railways in the Twenties" by Humphrey Household. [1]  It consists of a review of the development of the railways in Gloucestershire supported by a series of photographs which were predominantly taken in the 1920s by Humphrey Household. The photos are a significant resource. The text of the book is well-written. Its final two chapters were of real interest to me.

[rogerfarnworth]

The Purton Viaduct and the Purton Steam Carriage Road. ....

On the road between Purton and Etloe on the Northwest side of the Severn Estuary there is a railway viaduct. Seemingly it sits remote from any former railway. Although you might just be forgiven for thinking that it is a remnant of the Forest of Dean Central Railway which ran through Blakeney, or even associated with the Severn & Wye Railway which ran close to, but to the South of, the hamlet of Purton.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2023/09/10/the-purton-viaduct-and-the-purton-steam-carriage-road/

[rogerfarnworth]

The Severn & Wye Joint Railway and it’s Locomotives – The Railway Magazine,  November 1899.

Reading the November 1899 edition of The Railway Magazine, I came across an article about railways and tramways in the Forest of Dean … ‘The Severn &  Wye Joint Railway’ by E.A. Clark.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2024/09/10/the-severn-wye-joint-railway-and-its-locomotives-the-railway-magazine-november-1899

The article from 1899 adds something to the series of posts already made about the Forest and its tramways/railways

Clark says that “it was in the year 1809 that the initiative of the Severn and Wye took place. It had long been felt that there was great commercial scope in the Forest of Dean, and in this year Parliament sanctioned the construction of a tram road through the district. The undertaking was incorporated by the name of the Lydney and Lydbrook Railway Company, ‘for the purpose of making a railway or tramway from the River Wye at Lydbrook to the River Severn at Lydney, with various branches to serve the collieries in the Forest of Dean’. The Company finding their undertaking not complete, owing to there not being proper accommodation at Lydney for the export of coal, etc., in the following year (1810) obtained power by an Act of Parliament for the construction of a canal (over one mile in length) and docks or basins at Lydney to communicate with the River Severn, and the name of the Company was changed by the same Act to the Severn and Wye Railway and Canal Company.” ...