WANTED 60lb Bullhead Track

Does anyone know of any 1870ish Bullhead Track and chairs that are aviaalbe for a museum exhibiton please?

Ideally around 400' of rail plus chairs to create 200' of exhibition track.

If so, please can you email me on david@davidhumphreys.uk or call 0330 111 0824

Thank you

David

 

Hi Dave, you might want to put this over on the standard gauge forum as well as some may not see this

 

Was bullhead ever rolled at 60 lb/yd? It is listed in BS9 but that doesn't mean that it was.

 

From memory, 60 years ago, doing my HND Engineering, yes. It came about by the advent of the Bessemer converter. I stand to be corrected...my memory these days is not entirely reliable...

 

Thanks all

 

Hope you find some...keep us informed please...

 

Page 10 (An Old Potts Chair) of the Spring 2012 edition of the Col. Stephens Society journal says the Col. found (and re-used) 60 lb/yd "double head wrought iron rails" when reconstructing the ‘Potts’ into what became the Shropshire & Montgomeryshire.

He also used 60lb flat-bottom rail for both the Rother Valley Railway and the Selsey Tramway. In the early preservation years of the K&ESR I think 60lb flat-bottom rail could still be seen in some of the sidings.
https://colonelstephenssociety.co.uk/onewebmedia/Colonel 106.pdf

 

I wonder if there is still an old rail yard or somewhere which has not been disturbed in years, that might have some buried in concrete.

 

The closest match may be the ex Penrhyn mainline 50lb/yd bullhead which was sold to the F.R. and has now been largely? replaced.
Ray.

 

Back in the very early days of GCRN (so early 2000s) there was a project to recover some track from sidings at Nottingham Midland. The further into the sidings you went, the older the track became. Some of it was extremely historic; some of it was even quite strange; and I think nearly all of it was scrapped to pay for the transport for the few useful bits. I still have a Midland Railway chair somewhere from this job, which pre-dates the practice of putting dates on the castings; I think the theory was that it was track which had been first laid on the Settle & Carlisle line (so 1870s) and then replaced and reused in sidings elsewhere on the Midland, but obviously there's no way to prove that.

Finding a decent length of rail of that vintage (and knowing what it is) must be quite difficult now. More so if you want all the fittings as well, and even more so if it's for narrow gauge.

I must admit though that I do like these 'early rail' type displays, when I see them, which is not often.

 

Double head and Bull Head are two different things. Double head is symmetrical in cross section and theoretically can be turned over. In reality it doesn't work like that.

Replaced on the main line but there's still a lot in use in sidings. The newest sections apparently were rolled in 1909. The best of the leftovers were used in the waggon tracks shed. A large quantity of particularly knackered stuff was sold to the ill fated Penrhyn Railway rebuild. I don't know what happened to it after that. It's probably still lying on the ground at Bethesda.