During one of the heavy showers which punctuated the Corris Railway’s Gala Day visitors who took shelter in the carriage shed at Maespoeth Junction had their eyes caught by a very unusual item of rolling stock. It has now been moved to its planned home in the Museum at Corris Station.
The four wheeled wooden bodied vehicle is the reconstructed velocipede, bringing back a small vehicle which was once used by the permanent way workers on the Mid Wales narrow gauge line in its original incarnation. The work on this recreation was carried out by the current Corris’ “Tuesday Gang” who have steadily been reviving and recreating the waggon fleet.
Known to former Corris Railway staff as the Manrider it is believed that the velocipede was towed at the rear of a train proceeding along the line until it reached the work site where it was detached. Once the train had been left tools were unloaded and after that the body and then the wheels were removed from the rails. At the end of the working day the vehicle was reassembled with the body turned through 180 degrees, tools reloaded and gravity saw the vehicle and the workers return home, control being managed by a simple brake acting on one of the four wheels. There was a facility to allow the velocipede to be pedalled along if required but a combination of very basic axleboxes and the Corris’ gradients and curves would not have made this a popular practice. One curiosity which will now probably never be explained is that the wheels have six spokes on one side and four on the other.
After the line was closed in 1948 the Forestry Commission took over the locomotive shed at Maespoeth Junction and the vehicle was dumped in the inspection pit inside the shed. The Corris Railway Society was able to acquire the remains and they were taken to Corris to await reconstruction.
One difficulty was that only one picture exists of the velocipede, so the reconstruction has been based around those remains and calculations based on them and the photograph. These were two solebars, the brake anchor and the wheelsets. The pedalled axle had suffered damage and it and the wheels required specialist welding in Machynlleth. This was not helped by the original Victorian casting of the iron being less than perfect with an excess of sand inclusion.
Working from the surviving parts and the photograph the joiners in the Gang ordered the wood and set about reconstructing the body. The seat was created and positioned after some consultation as in the best place to work the pedals and a new rimmed platform was created as the likely way to carry the tools. A new brake was created to suit the 2 feet diameter wheels and other metal work was also carried out in-house.