The Port Carlisle Branch

[RogerFarnworth]

Our long holiday in 2022 was spent in the far North of Scotland. We stopped off to break the return journey close to Carlisle at a B&B in a hamlet called Boustead Hill adjacent to the Solway Firth.

This gave me an opportunity to find out more about the Port Carlisle Branch which was built on the line of the old canal between Carlisle and Port Carlisle.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/18...railway-part-1

[hereward]

I was quite amazed at the cost of a canal and the cost of a railway

[RogerFarnworth]

A marked difference!

[RogerFarnworth]

For around fifty years the passenger rail service to Port Carlisle was provided by a a horse drawn dandy carriages. ....

One of these Dandy carriages is preserved in the National Railway Museum in York.

The linked article focusses on this horse-drawn service. ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/18...railway-part-2

[hereward]

That Dandy Car looks too heavy for one horse, and that's before those people pile on.
Canals v Railways reminded me of school, about the time of the Queen's coronation, the teacher asked: why build a railway and not a road? Somebody said a railway would be cheaper, you only have to put two rails down.

[RogerFarnworth]

Yes, quite a heavy vehicle! It was helped by the very shallow gradients on the line.

The answer to the teacher's question was very true. One of the reasons that road came to so dominate rail was that roads were heavily subsidised through taxation. The railways were expected to break even.

Rail was bound to be cheaper than road if the playing field was kept level! Just as it was cheaper than the canals it displaced.

[hereward]

Roger the teacher's answer was: "Would it." I never got my head around the problem. I have just Googled the cost of HS2 per mile, one was £307m per mile and the cost of building a motorway 29.7m per mile. What you say still stands, a railway would have to show a return and be self maintaining. VED is expected to raise £7.2 billion over the next year and every year after.

[RogerFarnworth]

After 1914 and the reintroduction of steam power on the branch, there was a short period during the later part of the First World War when the line to Port Carlisle was closed. When it reopened, the hoped for increased passenger traffic never materialised. As the 1920s wore on, the LNER decided that it would replace locomotive power on the branch with steam railcars.

The first was 'Nettle', the second, 'Flower of Yarrow'.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/19...railway-part-3

Sadly, their introduction did not significantly improve the financial position and the length of the line from Drumburgh to Port Carlisle was closed in 1932. .....

[hereward]

I was surprised to see LNER operating in that part of the country- a legacy of the grouping - LNER absorbing NBR. Roger it is your fault I have to keep Googling these things. Years ago I delivered to the Sentinel works, I remember the statue. It must have been owned by Rolls Royce then. The company has a colourful history. It is still going and the history is on their website. The last time I went there part of the site is occupied by a Morrison supermarket, they have some interesting photographs of the Sentinel works in the café. Surprised also to see Sentinel made diesel lorries in the 1950's, I never saw any.

[RogerFarnworth]

Hi Hereward,

I am glad that these things provoke memories.

Yes, I too was surprised that the LNER had the lines to Silloth and PortCarlisle. However, they left Carlisle alongside the NBR, then LNER shed, andeffectively branched of the Waverley Route, so perhaps it makes sense?