Lincolnshire Potato Railways. Some Inspiration

The main purpose of this page, other than to inspire you with "Taatey Railway" scenes, is to act as placeholder for the research images I find.

Dave Enefer has a couple of pages of Potato Railway images over at his excellent site covering the railways of Lincolnshire. All are from Nocton, but with such a huge estate that's no surprise.

Page 1 is here.     Some very nice shots of trains in the fields at Nocton on this page, as well as workers loading potatoes.

Page 2 is here     The best thing for me about this page of pictures is the images that contain shots of farm buildings.  Any model of mine will include some farm buildings acting as view blocks and exits to the hidden storage areas.

The Lifu rail truck  This might be the most important piece of film out there in relations to potato railways. The LIFU rail truck. manufactured by the liquid fuel company of the Isle of Wight.
Of course if you're very, very lucky, you might find one of these old cigarette cards on a well known online auction site. This is quite valuable to see as it suggests it was a chain driven four wheel driven creation. A model of this will certainly find its way onto whatever potato railway layout I build.

Lincolnshire Potato Railways, Some history

Perhaps before I get started on this journey, a word or two about Lincolnshire Potato Railways.
Whenever people ask me where I am from in England and I tell them "Lincolnshire", the vast majority have absolutely no idea where it is. Some will be honest and say they have no idea, others say yes, they know. But the blank look on their face tells me otherwise. So a quick geography lesson is in order.
Lincolnshire, historically speaking is the second largest county in England. Situated on the East side about half-way up the country. It can be said to be ignored by much of the rest of the UK, despite having some of the best beaches in Europe and a truly wonderful area of outstanding natural beauty in the Lincolnshire Wolds.

Lincolnshire. The area in Red. The should clear up any confusion.

It has always been a agricultural county, having some very fertile land for growing crops, and a very varied range of produce is grown on the land. We, of course, are most interested in the humble potato.
The "Taates" as they are known locally, are grown on the low lying coastal land, known as The Fens, and on the flood plain of the River Witham towards the county seat of Lincoln.

Lincolnshire. The major Potato Farm railways were just to the South East
of Lincoln, and the area bounded by Boston, Spalding and The Wash (The Fens).

The first railway was laid in 1908 as an experiment that was clearly found to be successful. The real explosion in the development came after the end of WW1, when ex-War Department track and stock became available at very cheap prices.
It is difficult to estimate just exactly how many farms and how many miles of track there was. The accepted estimate is approximately 140 miles of railway on 50 farms. Some were short lines that would run from the middle of a field to a loading dock alongside a road barely a mile in length. While the estate at Nocton covered 8,000 acres and had about 22 miles of track.
Why is this rich source of railway inspiration for the modeller ignored? Well, most of these lines were horse worked. The farms already had horses, it was a convenient source of power.  There are only about a dozen locomotives recorded as operating on these lines. One steam loco, (that turned out to be too heavy for the ground). A unique paraffin fired rail truck, and a few internal combustion loco's Simplex,  Rustons, and one from Robert Hudson. The lines by nature, could also be temporary, with rails being laid into a field when the crop was ready to move and when that was done, moved to the next.
Inspiration does exist in the form of photographs and later on I'll share some links. But if you're really interested in learning more, the 'bible" of Potato Railways is Stewart Squires excellent book called, quite unsurprisingly, The Lincolnshire Potato Railways. Published by the Oakwood Press. It's is also known as Locomotion paper number 163.

The kick off.

So, how did I get here? Why, after years and years of procrastinating over a Potato Farm Railway layout did I get the urge to build one?
Well, It is Canadian Modeller Craig Parry's fault. He is the current owner of The Crowsnest Tramway layout originally created by Roy C. Link many years ago. He was showing it at the national Narrow Gauge convention in Minneapolis. The model is a 1/32 scale model of a two foot gauge railway. I'd never seen 1/32 scale narrow gauge before and I was struck by the nice physical size of the locomotives on display.
Craig and I talked at length about the layout in his possession and a bit about 1/32 narrow gauge. I mentioned that I'd seen a 1:32 scale kit in the vendor hall of the Malcolm Moore V8 locomotive. I mentioned I was thinking about buying it but I don't really need to work in another scale. He'd seen the same kit on sale too and remarked that at the price it was being sold at, it was a really good deal, and that it would make a very nice model indeed with a Black Beetle power unit underneath it.  So I quickly nipped back upstairs and bought it.

This kit has kicked the project into action

So, I now have a new kit of a two foot gauge locomotive that needs a power unit. I have no track, no rolling stock (though as I will explain later that's not entirely true) and no layout.
All I have at the moment is years of research and enthusiasm for Potato Railways. Which is as good a place as any to start.

Introduction and Explanation.

Here we are. Another new layout scheme and another new blog to go with it. If all goes to plan, this will turn into something I've wanted to create for a long, long time. A Model Railway layout based on the Potato Farm Railways of my home county of Lincolnshire in the U.K.
The title of the blog goes back about 10 years to when I was first corresponding with Roy C. Link of Narrow Gauge and Industrial Railway Modelling Review, as he was about to publish an article about my Purespring Watercress layout in issue 70 of said magazine. We had discussed Watercress Railways and my Lincolnshire heritage and he had mentioned in passing that he hoped to one day see a layout based on the Lincolnshire Potato Farm Railways. Back then there were no Potato farm layouts around. Now I know of at least two. Two Sisters Farm and Tates Railway, but it's still a neglected subject.
I have heard tell that some notable modellers have used the phrase. "I'm going to work on my Lincolnshire Potato Railway Layout" to describe a project that will never get started.
As a Lincolnshire Yellowbelly of many generations, the Potato Railways of my home county have long held a fascination for me. I have copies of both editions of Stewart Squires excellent book on the subject and have spent many hours poring over the photographs and text, tracing routes on maps,  looking for the inspiration to start the layout. Many schemes have been concocted over the years, perhaps I still have some of them around. If so, I'm sure I'll share them as things develop.
So sit back, enjoy the ride, and feel free to contribute if you have something to share.