Tram
Category
Historic Services / Indoor transportation
Date
Unknown
Materials
Metal
Collection
Tatton Park, Cheshire
NT 1298862
Summary
A historic system comprising of a tramway. This and a similar one at the Home Farm were used to transport coal and goods. The turn table is marked Decauville Aine Petit-Bourg. A report by Ian West and Marilyn Palmer on the technology at Tatton, February 2013, describes the tramway as approximately 400mm gauge, to the spine corridor, where a turntable enabled the trucks to be turned through 90° to travel on the rails which run from the west end of the corridor, adjacent to the furnace/calorifier room, to the bottom of the lift shaft. The railway performs an “S” curve to traverse from the spine corridor to the lift corridor. The railway now surviving is shown on an undated “Plan for tramway for Lord Egerton” which is clearly a construction drawing, indicating that the railway was built in a single phase. The rails are described as “9lb steel” – presumably having a weight of 9lb per yard length as this was the normal way of expressing rail sizes. Steel was not commonly used for railway rails until at least the 1860s. Two flat-bed railway trucks survive; it is possible that these are contemporary with the railway itself. They would have carried coal, either in sacks or in some form of tub.Tatton’s coal railway is, as far as is known, a unique feature in a British country house.