The Pigsty Hill Rides Again

After thirty years in a house in North Bristol with a tiny, sloping, North-facing garden, I finally moved half a mile to a house with the garden of my dreams. It is medium-sized, flat and south facing. Paradise, except that I had to rip up the result of thirty years trial and error and start afresh. This page describes how I began to tackle this task.

History of the PHLR

The PHLR has always been to 16mm scale, and was originally 32mm gauge. In its earliest manifestation, it was very loosely based on the Pentewan Harbour Railway, and one of its coaches was based on the PHR director’s coach. (Yes, that apostrophe is in the right place – the PHR was very much a one-man band.)

After years of trouble with bending flexible track to the tight radii necessary and keeping it bent, I decided to go for set track. Neither Mamod nor PECO were providing this at the time, so I switched to 45mm gauge to use LGB track, a decision that I have never regretted. To make best use of the space available, some curves had to be restricted to R0 16.5 inch (422mm) radius track (available from Bertram Heym¹), and tastefully concealed behind a fernery.

This final version of this line, the Pigsty Hill Light Railway, was based on a fictional feeder to the metre-gauge North Borneo Railway. It all had to be taken up before moving, a very sad business as you will see from the picture, but at least all of the LGB track was reusable. Given its cost, this was a Good Thing, but that was one of my considerations in the first place. Nothing is permanent in this transitory world, but LGB track comes as close as anything.

Devastation at Pigsty Hill

I must admit that I was at a loss for a prototype for the new line until this summer, when I visited the lower terminus of the 2’6" gauge Pentewan Harbour, where one can still see a few tracks and ramps from which ships were loaded. While sheltering from the fierce Cornish sunshine, which threatened to penetrate my cagoule and rust up my camera, I decided to model the PHR’s extension through Heligan to Mevagissey.

In the 1890’s, the railway was faced with the increasing silting-up of Pentewan Harbour, ironically caused by waste sand from the very industry that it served. The PHR management and the Tremayne family of Heligan proposed an extension to Mevagissey. The new line deviated from the original at Nansladron Junction, using the course of an existing private lane that linked Heligan House with the main St Austell – Pentewan road. There was a private halt at Heligan House for the Tremayne family and their guests and a public station for the gardens. Originally, this was to be named ‘Heligan Gardens’, but this was changed to ‘Pigsty Hill’, a local landmark, to avoid confusion with the House station.

The route then followed an existing path into Mevagissey, where there was a Town station, which is now, alas, a car park. A branch ran through the narrow streets to the harbour, very much after the fashion of the W&LLR at Welshpool. This had the dual function of exporting china clay and transporting fish to those up-country via interchange sidings with the GWR at St Austell.

Map of the PHLR

This new line was built under a Light Railway Order and assumed the name of the Pentewan and Heligan Light Railway, although it was in practice completely controlled by the Pentewan Harbour and Railway Company. It is conjectured that the omission of Mevagissey from the railway's name was an attempt to prevent the GWR getting wind of the PHLR's designs on a desirable holiday resort. This turned out to be academic, as the locals christened it the 'Pigsty Hill Light Railway' almost from its opening day, and this name appeared in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide from 1895 onwards.

Incidentally, it was long thought that 'Pigsty Hill' was a named after the Tremayne estate's famous pigsties, home of the rare Cornish Blue breed, but it is likely that the name is much older. Recent archaeological research points to a Neolithic pig cult. The discovery of charred remains of pigs, in shallow pits among evidence of feasting, gives credence to this theory.

The line did important duty during both World Wars, although security prevented any photography of its vital cargoes. By the end of the Great War, both locomotives, ‘Canopus’ and ‘Pioneer’, and most of the stock were worn out, and the future looked bleak. However, by a happy chance, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Tremayne of the Royal Engineers, a director of the PHLR, returned from the war with knowledge of a brand new geared 0-4-0T that had been destined for a 750mm gauge mountain railway in Saxony, but which had been seized as reparations. A number of waggons were also available, and the appropriate strings were pulled. These arrived at St Austell (GWR) in March 1921 and the railway was saved. A visible sign of this remained to the end of the PHLR, in that centre couplings were retained on the new rolling stock, replacing the PHR’s previous system of side buffers, itself most unusual for a narrow gauge line. The two older locomotives were sold for scrap, raising the princely sum of £45.

After World War II, the forward-looking Tremayne family saw the possibilities of their gardens as an attraction for the better class of tourist, with the nearby private Heligan House Halt keeping the hoi polloi away from the house itself. Pigsty Hill station handled visitors to the gardens. Many holidaymakers who took the train to Mevagissey returned to the gardens for a closer look, having had a taste of their beauties on the journey from St Austell.

In the mid 1950’s, much of the china clay traffic was redirected via standard gauge lines to Par and Fowey but, for a while, things looked rosy with the increase in post-war tourism. Alas, this didn’t last and, as car ownership grew, passenger numbers fell off. The PHLR management tried to compete by introducing diesel haulage and even a diesel railbus, but it was to no avail.

Sadly, the last train ran in 1961. If only it had survived a few more years, it would have made a delightful preserved line. How the good citizens of Mevagissey would prefer the ‘emmet dilly’ to today’s traffic jams!

There has recently been much talk of re-opening at least a part of the line, but the Preservation Society is deeply split as to which part, and little progress has been made.

However, all is not lost. It is now possible to walk the line almost in its entirety. Cornwall County Council’s ‘Coast and Clay Trail’³ faithfully follows the trackbed from Carthew to Mevagissey via St Austell and Pentewan, with a short deviation around Heligan Gardens.

I decided that Pigsty Hill station would be the perfect prototype, with Heligan House Halt a few scale yards away for a later project. It was of particular interest, exporting exotic fruit and vegetables and importing coal and other necessities for the house, as well as visitors to the Gardens. Passing trains carried tourists, fish, china clay and general goods.

After all, if one is modelling a railway in a garden, why not model a railway in a garden? It also didn’t escape my notice that Mevagissey quay would be a perfect setting for my tiny indoor line, but that’s another story.

I decided to model the railway as it was in the early 50’s, when a healthy mineral and fish traffic was still being carried, and when the tourist traffic was at its height. It suits my existing locos and stock and gives me the excuse to build, beg or borrow a railbus, a project that has been much on my mind.

This autumn, I had the pleasure of walking the trackbed of the PHLR. I was delighted to find the sole remaining building of the old Pentewan Harbour Railway, a china clay store in the Co-op car park at the bottom of West Hill, St Austell. As I crested the summit of the line, looking across to Pentewan Beach on one side and Heligan Gardens on the other, I pondered on the loss of what would surely have become a major tourist attraction and a boon to the car-infested streets of Mevagissey.

Even before moving in to the new house, I had measured the site and planned both garden and railway together. Some garden railways look as if the plants are a necessary nuisance, added to pacify the Domestic Authorities, while others tiptoe nervously around the herbaceous border, hoping not to be noticed. Fortunately, my wife Liz is a railway-lover and was happy for the railway and garden to co-exist. I sketched out a basic track layout using WinRail³, and from then on all the design work was done using a cheap (under ten quid) but excellent garden design program.

If I may crave the reader's indulgence, I’d like to state some general principles here. I believe that, if possible, and I emphasise ‘if’, the radius on the main line should be no less than four feet (1200mm). Smaller radii should either be concealed decently behind the foliage, or given an industrial/agricultural setting. Peat railways, for example, used radii that would make set track look spacious and, surely, somebody must have modelled the spiral inside the Dublin Guinness Brewery…

If you want a ‘wiggly’ railway, and many of us do, give the railway a reason to wiggle. Nothing looks sillier than a railway winding its way across a featureless plain. In my youth, I recall watching trains from the top of Glastonbury Tor; the Somerset Central main line ran straight as an arrow over the Levels to Highbridge, where it crossed the equally rectilinear Great Western main line. Given a flat garden, the first thing I (or, more accurately, my contractors) did was to excavate a pit for a large pond and to use the spoil to build a couple of hills to act as obstacles around which the line could wiggle.

When Bart Simpson plays with Mr Burns’ model railway, he tells Millhouse in awe-struck tones that "it'll be gone for three hours, and yesterday it came back with snow on it!" There’s a grain of truth there; if you are going to run trains in a circuit, which I do, then at least make sure that it’s not all visible from a single point. There’s no need for a tunnel. If it disappears behind a hill or a line of bushes, that’s just as good. I’m probably stating the obvious, but a train running at a prototypical narrow gauge speed is out of sight for longer than one that corners on its starboard wheels.

Which takes me on to my fourth and final principle. Decide whether you want to shunt your stock and run to a timetable. If you do, you’ll need a raised line that’ll get higher as you get older and less flexible. If you just want to watch trains, you can get away with a ground-level line for much longer. Unfortunately, you won’t know which to choose until you’ve operated a railway. For those who are lucky enough to have a neighbour with a railway, this will not be costly. I wasn’t so lucky, and got it wrong first time around. I’ve discovered I’m a train-watcher, so the new line is at ground level with manual steam, and both R/C and manual battery locos. Accordingly, Pigsty Hill station has the minimum configuration of a good long passing loop and a single siding. The resulting design was as illustrated.

Plan of the new PHLR

The flat part of the garden had been covered with a plastic membrane, slit to allow planting and topped with wood-chip mulch. Just to see how it looked, I then laid out the LGB track on top of this, changing the design slightly from my plan to match the actual lie of the land. Rather to my surprise, a single run with my track-clearing wagon made the line passable by a battery diesel, and the visual effect was surprisingly good. For a more permanent job, I fastened the track together with Hillman rail-clamps on the inside rail. This was a bustard of a job, done on hands and knees with an Allen key; at one point I was overtaken by a worm in a hurry. Nevertheless, I was then able to run PHLR #18 ‘LIZZIE’, my Regner Wilma (since sold), and was delighted to find that she would pull all my stock at a steady scale 15mph without breaking sweat.

Given that it looks good and runs well, I am minded to leave it like that, possibly ballasted with smaller wood chippings. With the pine needles from next door’s Leylandii, it looks just right for a woodland railway. It needs sweeping before each run but, since it’s all accessible and self-supporting, I think that this is the best option.

My next task will be paths and "To the Gardens" signs. Unfortunately, outside work was delayed by the worst June and July that I can ever recall. ‘Flaming June’, indeed!

A familiar figure drives the inaugural train

PHLR #18, ‘LIZZIE’ negotiates a wiggly bit around Pigsty Hill itself

This owes a lot to an ancient article by Bill Cook⁶ in ‘Sixteen Millimetre Today’, the organ of the 16mm NG Association. The platforms are based on three-foot lengths of tongue-and-groove Two of these are slotted and glued together for the up platform, which holds the main station buildings, such as they are.

I planked the down platform with lolly-sticks cut to its width, and the up platform with alternating long and short sticks. These were cut to size using a cheap X-Cut guillotine, which explicitly states ‘for paper only’, but is fine for thin wood. Small gaps were left to allow for expansion in damp weather, and they were stuck down with exterior quality PVA glue. I then painted the whole with teak exterior polyurethane varnish.

I also made the palings of the platform fencing from lolly sticks, with one rounded end snipped off. These were glued to rails cut from thin wood strips and painted white with car spray. I screwed and glued two ¼" x ¼" hardwood strips to the back of the platform and screwed and glued the fences to the back of these.

Incidentally, it is not necessary to eat several hundred ice-lollies – craft shops sell the sticks in quantity.

I made the rude shed from six pieces of thin ply, cut to size with the guillotine and finished with car spray paint. I covered the roof with tinplate from flattened baked bean tins, opened up with tin snips and also cut with the guillotine. Warning – wear rubber gloves; freshly cut tinplate has very sharp edges! I used grey car primer for protection, but the tinplate still rusts most realistically after a few years of British sunshine.

I bodged the seats from lengths of ¼" x ½" and ¼" square wood strip from the local ironmonger. They are designed to be robust rather than elegant, and have lasted well in the steaming jungles of British North Bristol.

The station lights are Hobby’s street lamps, with a similar lamp fitting inside the booking office. These are fed via wires under the platform from 2 x AA NiMH cells in the office, but I hope to replace that with the gubbins from a solar garden lamp. Most of my stock is lighted, and it makes a fine show at night. To my eye, the whole gives something of the impression of Llanfair Caereinion in pre-preservation days.

By the way, the figures are from Rob Bennett⁵, of whose talents I am insanely jealous.

An aerial view of the station with Pigsty Hill behind

The Pigsty Hill Brains Trust in session

How the fence is attached. This is the view the passengers DON’T see

Almost everything I’ve suggested in my imaginary history might well have happened. The Pentewan Harbour Railway was real, and most of it can be walked today. After sketching out my legend, I re-read my Bible, ‘The Pentewan Railway’⁷. The PHR did propose extensions up the Trenance and Gover valleys to the china clay pits, although these were finally built by the GWR. Much to my surprise, one John Tremyane of Heligan did offer to invest in an extension to Mevagissey. The route I sketched out does match the Coast and Clay Trail, although it skirts the actual Gardens.

3 Coast and Clay Trail - http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/index.cfm?articleid=10430

4 Pendlebury Model Buildings, 26 Wythwood Road, Hollywood, Birmingham B47 5QL, 0121-430-5272

6 'Have a Go – Lineside Shelter', Bill Cook, Sixteen Millimetre Today, Number 50

7 ‘The Pentewan Railway’, M J T Lewis, Twelveheads Press. 1981, ISBN 0 906294 04 5