Lancaster and Carlisle Railway

Lancaster & Carlisle Railway

Legend
 Caledonian Main Line
 Carlisle Citadel
Maryport & Carlisle Rly
Tyne Valley Line &
Settle-Carlisle Line

 Brisco
 Wreay
 Southwaite
 Calthwaite
 Plumpton
 Penrith

Cockermouth, Keswick
& Penrith Railway

Clifton Moor

Eden Valley Railway
Clifton and Lowther
 Shap
 Shap Summit
914 ft 
279 m 
South Durham &
Lancashire Union Railway

 Tebay

Low Gill
Ingleton Branch Line
Grayrigg
Kendal &
Windermere Railway
 Oxenholme
Hincaster Branch
 Milnthorpe
 Burton and Holme
Furness & Midland Jnt Rly

Ulverstone &
Lancaster Railway
Carnforth
Bolton-le-Sands
 Hest Bank
Morecambe Branch Line
"Little" North
Western Railway

Glasson Dock Branch
 Lancaster Castle

Lancaster (Greaves)
Lancaster & Preston
Junction Railway

The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&CR) was a British railway company authorised on 6 June 1844 to build a line between Lancaster and Carlisle in North West England. The line survives to the present day as part of the West Coast Main Line (WCML) route between Glasgow and London.

History

Proposed Routes

When the directors of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway were choosing its route in the 1840s, one possibility considered was a route through Kendal and along Longsleddale, with a 2-mile tunnel under the Gatescarth Pass into Mardale and thence towards Bampton. This route had the support of the Kendal Committee of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway; other alternatives under consideration included a line over a barrage across Morecambe Bay and round the Cumbrian coast, routes bypassing Shap to the east and west. Thomas Bouch was approached to be an adviser on the Longsleddale route and if this route had been chosen, in all probabilities Thos. Bouch would have been appointed as the civil and railway engineer. Bouch was the engineer for the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway and acquired the wrong kind of fame in later years, for it was his design of the Tay Railway Bridge that was torn down in a severe storm.

The gradient of the Longsleddale route would have been somewhat less than the 1 in 70 gradient of the climb up and over Shap Fell and the use of banking engines could have been reduced if not entirely eliminated. An interesting scenario emerges that if the route had been chosen and the railway passed through a tunnel under Gatesgarth Pass, emerging onto Mardale Common and passed alongside the lake of Haweswater; would the Mardale valley have been flooded to form Haweswater reservoir?

It has been said that the Longsleddale route, "had it ever been built, would have been as dramatic and awe-inspiring as any in Britain".[1] After a lengthy Parliamentary inquiry the longer and steeper route through the Lune Gorge and over Shap Fell proposed by Joseph Locke was chosen. The Shap route was however compromised by the inability to directly serve Kendal, for this reason a station at the nearby village of Oxenholme was built for this purpose.

Construction

The first sod was cut at Shap Summit (the highest point on the planned route, 914 ft / 278.59 m above sea level) on 17 July 1844. The original intention was to build a single line, but in January the following year it was announced that the line would be double track.

The railways opened in two sections:

The engineer for the line was Joseph Locke who had been surveying routes between the two cities since 1836. George Stephenson had surveyed other routes in 1835: one was to skirt the Cumberland coast. The project was the largest single railway contract of the time (69 miles in length) and the contractor was Thomas Brassey in partnership with William Mackenzie and John Stephenson.[4] At its peak 10,000 men were involved and it was an incredible achievement to complete such an undertaking in only two and a half years. The main engineering features of the railway are the bridge at Lancaster; three substantial viaducts; and a high embankment between Grayrigg and Low Gill. The embankment south of Tebay was laid in the bed of the River Lune, which had been diverted from its course. Locke's course through the Lune Gorge would be used again by the engineers of the 1960s for the construction of the M6 motorway which runs in a split level cutting above the railway.

The cutting at Shap Summit was cut through rock, is about 0.5 mile (0.8 km) in length, and 50–60 feet (15.24 m to 18.29 m) in depth. The approach from the south, 30 miles (48.3 km) away at Carnforth, is in two sections:

The approach from the north is again of 30 miles (48.3 km):

The construction cost £17,000 per mile.[3]

The L&CR connected at the south with the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway a mile (1.6 km) to the south of the town; the new station was Lancaster Castle. In the north, trains ran into Carlisle (Citadel), opened on 1 September 1847.

Subsequently the L&CR built the Ingleton Branch Line in 1861, from Low Gill, and the Morecambe Branch Line in 1864, from a junction south of Hest Bank.

Whilst independent the Lancaster & Carlisle was very profitable and usually made returns on its shares of around 10%. In 1859 the L&CR was leased to the London and North Western Railway; it became part of the latter in 1879 - thus integrating it into the West Coast route, and after 1923 the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) through to the creation of British Railways in 1948. BR electrified the route in 1974 as part of the WCML modernisation scheme of the period.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Joy, David (1968). Main Line Over Shap: the story of the Lancaster-Carlisle Railway. Clapham: Dalesman. p. 14.
  2. ↑ "Lancaster and Carlisle Railway. Opening between Lancaster and Kendal". Carlisle Journal (England). 26 September 1846. Retrieved 10 April 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
  3. 1 2 "Opening of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway.". Carlisle Journal (England). 19 December 1846. Retrieved 10 April 2016 – via British Newspaper Archive. (subscription required (help)).
  4. ↑ Helps, Arthur The Life and Works of Mr Brassey, 1872 republished Nonsuch, 2006. pages 106-114 ISBN 1-84588-011-0

Further reading

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, April 11, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.