The Kotanga Valley and the Kotanga Timber Tramway.

[Annie]

Tee hee  - thanks Fritz.  That might mean that someone else may have ended up with straight coathangers.

I've been trying to research about the track building methods used on the Kotanga Timber Tramway and the biggest difficulty has been with actually figuring out the gauge the tramway was built to.  The Fred McMurphy interviews have helped a little as he does mention some of the methods used in working the sidings at Kotanga, but the strangest thing of all is his description of how laden tramway company wagons from the Posthole Mine were shunted onto the back of the NZGR morning mixed goods train that ran through to Thames.  The standard NZGR gauge is 3ft 6inches and the tramway gauge was certainly less than that, but despite that tramway company wagons would somehow end up coupled behind NZGR wagons most mornings.  Or at least they did until the day an inspector from 'out of district' caught sight of a tramway company wagon standing on NZGR metals in the Thames station yard.  After that everything had to be unloaded in the Kotanga station yard at the goods shed and then loaded onto NZGR wagons which pleased nobody very much at all apparently.
It seems too that the tramway company wasn't at all afraid of running a length of trackwork off to somewhere in the valley if there was thought to be a need for it.  And once laid trackwork never seemed to be taken up again, which meant that in some places the track junctions could be downright amazing.
A map has come to light in the historical society archives and I'll do my best to make a copy and post a scan of it so at least you'll have some idea of just where things were in the Kotanga Valley.

Believed to be a photo of the main street Kotanga circa 1910.


A rare picture showing part of the tramway beside the Kotanga River as well as the spectacular footbridge over the river itself.  The building to the left is believed to be the Tramway Hotel. Note the flume running beside the tramway.

[Annie]

Apparently there was a major corrugated iron shortage in Central NZ around about the end of the 19th Century.  It was so bad that abandoned mine workings, buildings and townships in the district were systematically 'mined' for their corrugated iron.  ('Mined' is the word used by NZ Archives)  Which set me thinking about what a corrugated iron miner might look like......



Seems logical to me that unemployed 'corrugated iron miners' would end up working at the Posthole Mine at Kotanga once the shortage was over   

After doing some more study into buildings and the like I think I'll build the 'Works' mainly in corrugated iron.  I had been trying to decide whether or not to build it in timber or brick, but for large industrial sized buildings corrugated iron seems to have been the most used material in the late 19th Century to early 20th Century period.

Believed to be the famous Coathanger Mill at Kotanga.  The very distinctive double decker road-rail bridge that carried the NZGR branchline over the Kotanga River in the foreground of this old photo identifies the location.  Note the extensive use of corrugated iron.

[Annie]

Isn't Google Earth wonderful    It took a bit of persistence, but in the end I discovered that Kotanga was on Google Earth.  Though of course it might not be there next time I look which is why I grabbed the image.  
This will save you all from my dreadful map making skills as well as giving you a better idea of where everything is or was.  It seems that time has moved on for Kotanga just as it does here, - though I'm not game to say which time it is down there or whether or not it will all changed in an hour from now.



The amazing road-rail bridge can be seen and over to the left the ruins of the Coathanger Mill are visible.  I wonder if the corrugated iron miners got at it?

[Annie]

Oh wow! - I am awfully glad I didn't start to lay any track yet because I've just found out that the Works tramway and the Posthole mine tramway were laid to the 'Ewing System'.

Suddenly it's all clear as to why I had sooooooo much trouble trying to find out what  exactly these tramways' gauges were.  Guided by some very fragmentary documents and a badly torn photograph I'd made plans for a very minimal gauge tramway around the engineering works.  And as you know from pictures posted elsewhere a small Baguley IC loco was specially built for this tramway.
I've sent a very urgent work order to Jim the foreman at the 'Works' to immediately begin work on converting the new Baguley loco to the Ewing System.  I won't repeat what Jim said, but something tells me he wasn't very impressed.

[Emettman]

And one still running, too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patiala_State_Monorail_Trainways

There appears to be even less trace of the related Larmanjat monorail system, which seemed to require (no-one knows why) an operator sitting in front of the smokebox door turning a "ships wheel"...

http://www.dself.dsl.pipex.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/lisbontramway/lisbontramway.htm

The "single outrigger" approach of the Ewing system seems far more sensible for stability and track construction, though the Larmanjat applied the power to the large wheel to get better traction on the ground, rather than on the smooth rail.

[Bill Wray]

Nothing against Annie's storytelling abilities, but once again, truth is stranger than fiction.

[G-man]

Annie

I can hardly wait to see your rendition of the Ewing Monorail system. This should be fascinating.

With your imagination it will be well worth waiting to see what you come up with. Tell Jim not to get so upset. He should look forward to working with you.

[TinGoat]

Here's a 1-2-0 Monorail!!!

Traveling lawn sprinkler tractor




Some call it a Rain Train Traveling Sprinkler ...

[crackingjob]

For your info

[Annie]

Thanks everyone 

I've held a long time fascination for the Ewing System and have spent many happy hours studying that wonderful O&K built 0-3-0 loco at the Delhi Railway Museum.  So you can understand my excitement when I discovered that the Ewing System was also used in the Kotanga Valley.
While the Patiala State Monorail is famously well known the Ewing System was used in other places as well and was found to be particularly useful for building contractors' railways.  It's actually a very practical form of monorail that requires no special trackwork as well as being built at ground level unlike almost every other monorail system that's been devised.  95% of the loco weight sits on the rail and only 5% rests on the balance wheel.  The Lisbon tramway certainly was an interesting form of monorail, but I think the error with that system lay in not applying tractive effort to the steel rail itself.
The lads are presently working very hard on a simple trial set of Ewing frames to fit the Works Baguley and Jim the foreman has reported back to me to say that the conversion is going particularly well.

[route29]

That is soooo cool!    Can't wait to see it on the Kotanga Valley.  Here's a YouTube video of the one at the Delhi Museum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5WUu0_MFNE

[Emettman]

Not having a time machine I can't be sure, but I suspect the problem with the Lisbon line was the four-point contact, with the two big driving wheels having an actual gauge thus requiring much greater precision in the track-laying.  The effective "triangle" arrangement of the Ewing is far more forgiving, even if the passengers would feel the lurching. 

Driving adhesion on smooth rails is (largely) fine on fairly level ground, but the weakness of that on gradients is what rack railways and the Fell system (and other less successful odditiies) were designed to overcome.
(I've seen the impressive surviving Fell engine that used to work on the Rimutaka incline out of Wellington...)
But driving one outrigger wheel would not be a good idea: the loco would be continually trying to turn left!

I look forward to seeing a Ewing...


"Hard Work"
Four locos on the Rimutaka

[Annie]

That is a stunning photo.  The Rimutaka incline was absolutely amazing, but even though I'm impressed I won't be diverted from the Ewing system.   

The lads report that they're having a lot of success with building a Ewing underframe.  They've been digging about all day in the big store crate where I keep all my Meccano and Meccano compatible clone bits and pieces and there's been the sound of much sawing and filing and drilling going on.  With any sort of luck I might be allowed to take a progress photo sometime tomorrow morning.

[Annie]

The lads are still very busy working on converting the Baguley to the Ewing system.  'No looking,' they told me, 'Go away with that camera we're not ready yet.'

Soooooo I guess we're all going to have to be patient for a while longer ........

[Annie]

Well not much luck at all really, the lads must've had every set of gears, cogs and sprockets out that I own and they still couldn't get a gearbox assembled.  Not entirely a wise idea to radically change underframes and drive systems after a loco body has been built because Kotanga Works No:1 is very small for a 1/12th loco and there isn't a lot of room inside the bodyshell.

We are not giving up........