Lake District Railways
To attempt a complete and detailed history of Lakeland railways here would be impossible;
in any case railway history is hardly a neglected topic, and therefore only the bare bones of railway development will be sketched. The strangest fact about most railways in the Lake District is how short a period they endured; their development began in the 1840s, but within 130 years little more than a single line around the Lakes survived. And yet within that short period the impact they had on the area was immense. Most of the lines were built for industrial traffic and the sheer scale of the growth of the mining and industrial areas, and of towns such as Workington and Millom, was unprecedented. The railways were fundamental to the midnineteenthcentury industrial growth of western Cumbria. Moreover the lines helped tourism to take off until the private car took over as the commonest means of transport.
In the eighteenth century there were a number of waggonways and tramways notably around the already important town and port of Whitehaven, but these were not in any real sense precursors of the rail-ways. Railways were late to reach even the fringes of the Lake District. The first was a short line from Maryport to Arkleby pit (near Aspatria) in 1840; it was eventually continued through to Carlisle by 1845 (which was already linked to Newcastle). Seeing this development as a potential threat, Lord Lowther had the line extended from Maryport to Whitehaven by 1847.
Further south, the Furness Railway had been opened in 1846 in order to transport the rich haematite iron ores from Lindal, and slate from Kirkby, to the sea principally through the port of Barrow (then only a tiny village) and also via Roa Island (Piel), both routes ignoring Ulverston and its canal. At the same time plans were afoot to link Whitehaven and Furness by rail; this was not planned as a west coast main line, but simply to allow the railway companies to reach more mineral deposits. By 1850 this link was complete, and it was possible for traffic to run from Furness via Whitehaven and Maryport to Carlisle. Such a journey involved five different railway companies, and was notoriously slow (plus c;a change!). Whitehaven tunnel was not opened until 1852; until then through traffic had to use a mineral line through the town. The technically difficult and expensive southern link around the sands to Carnforth was not completed until 1857, but it ended the traffic across the sands overnight, and made the Ulverston Canal redundant. This line, cutting across the Leven and Kent estuaries with long embankments and bridges, allowed the reclamation of substantial areas of what had formerly been salt marsh.
All these locally inspired and inward-looking lines were very different to the various grand designs for a west coast main line. In 1840, after much investigation, two Parliamentary commissioners recommended that the main line from Lancaster should go northwards over Shap, ignoring the various schemes which had been put forward for a coastal route.
by: Adrian Vultur
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