Katie
Eaton Park
28 August 2005
Regular visitors to the "Rail Diaries" will have
met the (replica) products of Sir Arthur
Heywood before - we've seen the delightful
"Effie" at Rhyl, and more recently "Ursula" (and
Shelagh...) at Perrygrove. Ursula carries the
initials "ER" on her buffer beams - denoting her
origin on the Eaton Railway, the 15" gauge line
built by Heywood for the Duke of Westminster
in the grounds of Eaton Hall, near Chester,
linking the hall with the Great Western main line at
Balderton.
The original line served its master for more than 50 years from
its construction in 1895, although Katie left during the first
world war, bought by the nascent Ravenglass and Eskdale
railway. She had been replaced by two larger locomotives - the
aforementioned Ursula and Shelagh. Sadly, she wasn't a lot of
use to the "Ratty", and was sold on in 1922 to the Llewellyn
Miniature Railway in Southport. W J K Davies, in "The Ravenglass
and Eskdale Railway" (David and Charles, 1968) suggests that she
"was badly worn when she came to Eskdale - the R&E must have
been fairly deperate to buy her".
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
The replica "Katie" was built in Hampshire in 1994, to operate on
a new 15" line at Eaton Hall - the Eaton Park Railway. This line is
arranged in the form of a large (and somewhat misshapen)
balloon loop, with a triangular junction at the neck of the
balloon. The short "string" runs through a gap in the garden wall
to the engine shed, with a small station facility immediately
outside the shed. The latter short section is, I understand, more-
or-less on the route of the original line.
The line is not normally open to the general public - except on
the three occasions each year when the gardens are open. The
last such date this year was the Sunday of the August bank
holiday weekend - so with reasonable weather forecast, off we
went!
I had imagined that the triangular junction would be used to
turn Katie between the half-hourly trips, so that she would
always run smokebox first. Not so! Perhaps then she would
always run clockwise, alternately cab first / smokebox first, in
order to equalise flange wear. Again, not so! Smokebox first trips
ran clockwise, bunker first trips anticlockwise. I suppose it saved
someone having to go out and change the points...
We arrived shortly after the gardens opened at 1.30pm, to see
Katie heading away from the hall with the open bogie
coach and the little four-wheeled brake - obviously
limited capacity for passengers - and when we enquired
at the booking desk, we found that all trips were fully
booked until around 5pm. However, after exploring the
gardens, we returned to the line to find that an extra
coach had been added - the closed saloon which was
referred to as "the Duchess's Coach". So we had our ride
- in the latter, a splendid vehicle for such a slim gauge,
although being inside meant I was unable to record our
trip on the video camera. Perhaps another day! Garden
open days are listed on the "Events" page of the Eaton
Estate website - if you're interested in an unusual
railway with an historic background in the field of
"minimum gauge railways", check it out!
Link:
Eaton Estate
Video:
Katie heads the open coach, "the Duchess's coach"
and brake, clockwise and anticlockwise.
(Sorry about the wind noise - it was a bit breezy at
times)
