Volk's Electric Railway: page 2

 

 

 

Nevertheless this trip was popular particularly after the Prince of Wales (later King Edward) had made the journey in February, 1898, together with the Duke and Duchess of Fife.

 

Sea encroachment near Banjo Groyne caused anxiety to Brighton Corporation at the turn of the century, and on January 17, 1901, it was resolved to move a portion of the railway to allow for lengthening a series of concrete groynes. It was found to be impossible to raise the railway to cross the newly extended groynes and its use was therefore abandoned.

 

The car was broken up (in any other country such a monument to pioneer endeavour would have been preserved at a national museum!) and the rails removed. Only the concrete bases, and not all of those, now form a. memorial to the scheme.

 

A car at high tide

 

The original shore line service was extended to operate to the borough boundary at Black Rock on February 21. 1901. Until May 16 of that year. there was a gap between this new section and the old, but it was then joined up over the Banjo Groyne. In 1902 an extension was authorised from Black Rock to Rottingdean, on the same gauge as the earlier Volk line from the Aquarium. These powers were for 2 miles 27 chains of line, and were obtained by the Brighton and Rottingdean Seashore Electric Tramroad Company, with a provision for running powers to and from the Aquarium.

 

As most of the journey between Black Rock and Rottingdean, under that fine expanse of cliff, would have had to he on a costly viaduct, the scheme did not progress. In the meantime the Aquarium to Black Rock section was now being operated by a limited company incorporated as Magnus Volk, Ltd., in 1901. For family reasons this company was reconstructed, with the same name, in 1923.

 

Overview of the Volks Railway layout.

Since then the company has occasionally been threatened with notice to quit, but the eastern end of Brighton beach would not be quite the same without the railway, and a compromise has been effected;: the widening of the Marine Parade in 1929 resulted in the removal of the line nearer the sea and a new station has arisen at the Aquarium end, while in 1911 a new station was opened at Black Rock. At each of these stations passengers are admitted through turnstiles to whichever platform a car is along side.

 

At Paston Place, once the headquarters and car sheds, a novelty was a siding which passed under a platform. This space saving contrivance was not unique as it was once. a London tube having adopted it in later years. The platform swung away when cars were using the siding. The running rail weighed 40 Ibs. per yard. while the third rail is as originally supplied by Siemens Brothers, some of whose original motors are still at work. The sharpest curve in the 1.7 route miles was 80 feet radius, and the steepest gradient was 1in 100.

 

Part of the line was on viaduct. and part laid on hard shingle, where level crossings are provided for beach users. The track is single, with pausing places, and as no signalling of the usual type is in operation, if two cars proceed in the same direction one following the other, the first carried a red striped " train following " board for the instruction of motormen at the passing places. There were ten cars, the late of which were extremely comfortable saloons. All run on four wheels, and a number of open ones for fine weather working are included, in which seats are arranged in " toast rack " formation.

 

"Pioneer" approaching the Banjo Groyne terminus from Rottingdean.

Power was taken from Brighton Corporation in bulk, 100 k.w. capacity generators were in use at the little sub-station at Paston Place; these were supplied by Elwell Parker and the British Thomson-Houston Company. The latter firm equipped the Daddy Longlegs section. Rubber-covered feeder cable distributes the power along the line, while on the trains it is applied to the motors through interesting controllers which are placed under the roofs of the cars. This unusual situation prevents unauthorised small boys, from playing trains, no doubt. The cars carried more than one million passengers in 1931.

 

Mr Magnus Volk, it may be mentioned in conclusion, demonatrated his versatility in 1888, when he built an electric dogcart, equipped with a half horse-power Immisch motor. This attracted great Press attention both at home and abroad, and in Germany a long appreciation was published in the Leipziger Zeitung.

 

Abdul Amid, Sultan of Turkey, saw this notice, and promptly ordered a Volk electric dogcart. Mr Magnus Volk thus initiated the British export motor car industry with a triumphal journey to Constantinople. where a successful trip was made in conveying palace officials round the harem gardens, and the inventor was rewarded with one of the Osmali orders.

 

 

 

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