Considering Fenit Harbour

[Northroader]

I would be inclined to hang my hat on the backscene. Those big grey hills shrouded in cloud, a stretch of calm sea, a rocky foreshore with some drystone walls, just like what appears in your photographs. Have that behind, and folks will say that’s Fenit, however you juggle the trackwork. Keep it simple, bare minimum for what you want to operate, don’t worry too much about how long things are on the full size job, and how many sidings there should be.

[Mol_PMB]

Since whatever I build will be in 21mm gauge and I'll have to make my own turnouts, I can design the geometry to fit the space available and the style of the prototype.

I have just downloaded Templot - there will no doubt be a learning curve once I get to grips with it! But I've managed to set my track gauge and standards, so that's a good start.

[MOGUL]

On 5/3/2025 at 5:17 PM, Mol_PMB said:

I've been busy busy at work recently and not much time to focus on modelling, though a bit of time for research. Still interested in Fenit as a prototype, I've been delving into that rabbit hole.

I found this image of a rather interesting early bogie wagon, apparently a 30 ton high side open goods wagon for the Tralee & Fenit Harbour Commissioners, body 34' long, built by the Lancaster Railway Carriage & Wagon Co. Ltd. It doesn't carry a number; I wonder how many wagons the T&FHC had? There are some odd technical details such as the long 5-link coupling, the buffers spaced on blocks, handbrakes acting on all wheels. The top plank of the body seems to run the full length of the wagon. It appears to be iron or steel-framed with T-bulb section for the solebars. Bogies are a rather lightweight diamond-frame 3-piece type. Some details may have been lost in retouching the photo to hide the background.

Anyone know more about these or other T&FHC wagons?

 

Apologies if it has already been mentioned, but Ernie Shepherd's Waterford, Limerick and Western Railway book seems like a good place to answer this one and a few other loose ends in this thread related to the T&FR wagons and also tubular wagons in general. 

In the Rolling stock chapter, under private owners we find the following snippet that gives an insight into the Fenit Harbour Comissioners wagons. It would seem that the order for wagons and likely 299 came out of some disastifaction with how the the W&LR had been handling(or not) the available traffic landing at Fenit for onwards transit to Tralee. The harbour comissioners seem to have taken matters into their own hands, and decided to work the pier themselves with the W&LR then working the traffic from the station on to Tralee using T&FHC wagons. To allow for this, the harbour comissioners leased six open-centre covered wagons(convertibles) and twelve open wagons from the Bristol Wagon co in 1899. These were numbered 1-12 for the opens and 13-18 for the covered wagons. Upon passing to the GS&WR these were renumbered 4667-4684. I wonder if pictures might be out there of them in GS&WR days. Ernie then goes on to say "of even more interest(especially for us) is the fact that the commisoners leased two tubular 33ft 10in bogie open wagons, built by the Lancaster RCW in 1900" On passing to the GS&WR these became 4050 and 4051 with 4050 being altered into a covered fish van in 1903. So likely the wagon in @Mol_PMB's picture is one of these wagons, with the picture likely a manufacturers delivery one.

 

However, it is possible that this is not the wagon seen in the pics of Waterford, as it turns out that the W&LR themselves also operated tubular wagons(albeit for a short while as open wagons). These get a separate section in the Rolling stock chapter which gives a brief history of tubular wagons including the foundation of a workshop in Barrow in Furness in the UK to built them and their trial use by a number of UK lines. It seems that the W&LR decided to trial 6 of these wagons themselves, with a few to purchasing some(Interestingly some of the W&LRs earliest goods stock was of bogie design). Two wagons were delivered to Limerick in July 1891(one low sided and one high-sided), but at over a year had elapsed since the initial order, so the W&LR cancelled the order for the other 4. It would seem that the wagons and indeed the whole tubular wagon concept wasn't the most sucessfull, as the wagons were out of use until Sept 1892, and were then converted into covered vans for the carriage of Hops and Bran between Clonmel and Waterford. The tubular wagon co went into liqudation in 1895, so the W&LR bought the wagons off the liquidator. Like the T&FHC wagon, one of these wagons was 33ft 10in(W&LR No 1178,maybe a similar design) with the second slightly shorter 33ft 2in(W&LR No 1179)..

 

[Mol_PMB]

Most interesting, many thanks!