THERE is, perhaps, nothing so distinctive in railway circles as a narrow gauge railway. Often built on the cheap, almost always constructed foraunique purpose, these little lines have an idiosyncrasy all their own. No two narrow gauge railways are alike, and often their engines are singular too!
To my mind, the modelling of these does not simply depend on choosing a likely prototype, but on intrinsically understanding the purpose and intention of what they were to be used for.Just as the Quarry Hunslets are synonymous with the slate industry of North Wales, so too are Manning Wardles with the Lynton & Barnstaple.
One of the challenges with a prototype such as the Lynton & Barnstaple Manning Wardle 2-6-2Ts is that the fate of the locomotives is intrinsically intertwined with the railway at large. To tell the story of the engines, you have to tell the story of the line as a whole.
Origin story
Proposals for a line between Lynton and Barnstaple had been made many times before, with varying degrees of progress, but one of the major challenges was the cost of building even a single line ofstandard gauge track. The success of narrow gauge endeavours, such asthe Ffestiniog, at providing a consistent service while saving costs proved inspirational to a group of businessmen, though the reality would be entirely the opposite.
The L&BR faced unique challenges. The contractorsfound hard rock instead of soft soil as they excavated the trackbed, and the company found landowners charging extortionate pricesfor land. In the end, the contractors went bankrupt, and the railway company fell into financial troubles it would never entirely escape from.
