The Forest Railroad.

Afternoon All,

Does anyone remember the 7¼ gauge Forest Railroad that used to be at Dobwalls in Cornwall? It was based on American practice and had two separate circuits with steep gradients, deep cuttings, bridges and tunnels. It was closed down in 2006/7, but I went there in 1989, luckily armed with a video camera.

I have now started editing the footage that I took at the time and the first instalment is now on YouTube. Click here if you like to have a look:



Hope it's of interest.

 

Nice Thought it might be the proposed Kielder Forest R'road at first, whatever happened there...

 

Keilder Forest Railroad? I've not heard of that, but it sounds intriguing...

 

Never got there. Would love to have seen their Big Boy.

 

So would I! It wasn't running on the day of my visit. Presumably it's still in Australia, but not in use.

 

I thought that the proposed Kielder Forest line was to be 2'g. using a wood-fired Fowler loco. - or was there more than one proposed line?
Re-Dobwalls, before the American locos arrived, there was a very nice LMS Duchess as shown in the photo from 1970 below.
Ray.

 

I believe that the Kielder project got as far as acquiring a steam loco - the Hunslet now called Green Dragon and running at South Tynedale - and a very nice coach, now at Statfold. I don't know why the project was aborted.

 

I think the loco aquired was the Fowler "Saccharine" ex Alford Valley and now also at Statfold. I think it was going to be renamed "Green Dragon", but never carried the name.

John

 

Thanks for this.
It looks to have been a good track with some challenges for the drivers. What happened to the locos when it closed ?

Mike - looking forward to Part 2

 

The locos. were all sold. Initially, they went to a proposed railway in Dorset, but that came to nothing. So they were sold again, this time to Australia, which is where they are now one. Apart from one, that it. And that's a freelance American style 2-6-2 built by David Curwin which can now be found on the Eastleigh Lakeside Railway in Hampshire.

Further instalments will appear on YouTube in due course.

 

I visited twice in the early 80s when on holiday in Devon. It was perhaps the most impressive 7 1/4 inch line I have seen.

The locos were something else.

I think the video shoes why they went for US locos, the Duchess (I think they also had a King as well) simply couldn't cope with the numbers.

It is a shame that it was lost, and I am not really sure why, because certainly the numbers in the video, look very healthy. Although it was a sunny day (I visited once on a wet day - not so good). Operation when I went was similar to the video. Two steam locos and then as numbers got busier services were augmented with the diesels.

I seem to recall that they tried to branch out into other things and maybe that didn't work (or it made more money than the railway).

Never did see the Big Boy in steam, I seem to recall that it was very much a high days and holidays loco and there were issues with the boiler.

It was a good place to go, the Thorburn gallery was nice as well for a change of pace.

 

I think it closed for financial reasons, but it seemed to do all right for well over 30 years. Did it loose favour with the public, or did the operating costs go up quicker than the the takings? Even if it had continued after 2006 / 7, would it have survived after the 2008 financial melt down? Who knows!

 

The track is on eBay if you look closely! Well, the rails anyway...

 

I believe that the Southern family continued farming, and went in for other diversification projects. IIRC, a holiday chalet type park. It could be that such visitors generate a consistent income, less affected by weather on any given day, as such accomodations tend to get booked up many months in advance. However "peace and quiet seclusion far away from it all" is less appealing if it is "far away from it all, unless the weather is reasonable and a shedload of families will turn up and make a lot of noise riding the trains"
The world turns, and what made good business in 1980 might not in 2020. I'm not sure if John Southern is still living, but even if he is, farmers are not noted for a surfeit of sentimentalism. The line did work for 40odd years, which he might have felt was enough.

 

There was clearly a lot of interest in the Forest Railroad, so the second part of the video I shot there in 1989 might also be of interest:



Further instalments will be published as time allows...

 

Yes we went there a couple of times in the 1980s. The track layout was interesting - couldn't work it out until I looked at the information leaflet. In the 2000s a friend of ours was going there on holiday and I told him he had to visit - looked online for details only to find that it had closed.

 

Afternoon All,

If anyone would like to have a look, I've just put Part Three of my 1989 Forest Railroad video on my YouTube channel. It has shots of the Union Pacific 4-8-2 QUEEN OF WYOMING and the Denver & Rio Grande 2-8-2 GENERAL PALMER. There's also a ride round the D&RGWRR circuit behind the 2-8-2.

Hope you like it:

 

I think you will find that 818, Queen of Wyoming is a 4-8-4. She was modelled on a Union Pacific FEF-1 class northern

 

Oh! I did look it up and saw other references to it being a 4-8-2. In most of the pictures, the wheels are in deep shadow so cannot easily be seen. However, I found one taken side-on in good lighting and yes, you're right, it's a 4-8-4! Unfortunately, I don't know how to alter captions once they're on YouTube. I don't even know if it's possible so the best I can do it put a correction in description underneath.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Ron.