Britain's tramway in the Forest of Dean

from RogerFarnworth.com

The featured image above shows the locomotive ‘Free Miner’ which was Works No. 61, at the Lilleshall Company Works, it was delivered to Trafalgar Colliery in February 1865 for use on the Tramway. The picture comes from Bob Yate’s book about the Lilleshall Company locomotives and railways, (c) Alan C. Baker Collection. [5: p55]

A little while ago, I wrote an article about the Trafalgar Colliery in the Forest of Dean and as part of that article started to cover Brain’s Tramway. That article can be found at:

https://rogerfarnworth.com/2019/09/24/trafalgar-colliery-and-railway

In that article, I noted that Brain’s Tramway was built soon after the opening of the colliery to connect to the Great Western Railway’s Forest of Dean Branch at Bilson [1] The single line of 2ft 7.5in gauge utilised edge rails laid on wooden sleepers and ran east from the colliery, turning south-east at Laymoor, and terminated 1.5 miles away at interchange sidings at Bilson. It would appear that the authorisation for its construction was a Crown licence for ‘a road or tramway 15 feet broad’ dated May 1862. The date the line was opened for traffic is unknown as, although the first of three locomotives used on the tramway was built in 1869, it is possible that it may have been horse worked before this date. [2]
I noted that the colliery appeared to have owned three locomotives: ‘Trafalgar’ and ‘The Brothers’ were 0-4-2 side-tank locos. The third locomotive was ‘Free Miner’, an 0-4-0 side-tank. The locomotive ‘Trafalgar’ continued in use until 1906, working on the northern extension of the tramway, built in 1869, to the Golden Valley Iron Mine at Drybrook. [2] We will return to these three locomotives later in this article.

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