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The '''Cornwall Railway''' was a [[broad gauge]] ({{RailGauge|84}}) railway from [[Plymouth]] in [[Devon]] to [[Falmouth, Cornwall|Falmouth]] in [[Cornwall]], England, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventually forced to sell its line to the dominant [[Great Western Railway]].
The '''Cornwall Railway''' was a [[broad gauge]] ({{RailGauge|84}}) railway from [[Plymouth]] in [[Devon]] to [[Falmouth, Cornwall|Falmouth]] in [[Cornwall]], Great Britain, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventually forced to sell its line to the dominant [[Great Western Railway]].


It was famous for building the majestic [[Royal Albert Bridge]] over the [[River Tamar]], and because of the difficult terrain it traversed, it had a large number of viaducts; because of the shortage of money these were built as [[Cornwall Railway viaducts|timber trestle viaducts]], proving to be iconic images but a source of heavy maintenance costs, eventually needing to be reconstructed in more durable materials.
It was famous for building the majestic [[Royal Albert Bridge]] over the [[River Tamar]], and because of the difficult terrain it traversed, it had a large number of viaducts; because of the shortage of money these were built as [[Cornwall Railway viaducts|timber trestle viaducts]], proving to be iconic images but a source of heavy maintenance costs, eventually needing to be reconstructed in more durable materials.

Revision as of 09:20, 2 September 2012

Cornwall Railway
The Royal Albert Bridge
that carries the Cornwall Railway across the River Tamar
History
1835Proposal for a railway
from London to Falmouth
1839Proposal for the Cornwall Railway
1846Cornwall Railway Act
1848-52Construction suspended
1859Opened from Plymouth to Truro
1863Opened Truro to Falmouth
1867Branch opened to Keyham Dockyard
1876Cornwall Loop line opened in Plymouth
1889Amalgamated with GWR
Engineering
EngineerIsambard Kingdom Brunel
Gauge84
Until 1892
Successor organisation
1889Great Western Railway
1948Western Region of British Railways
Key locations
Headquarters Truro, Cornwall
WorkshopsLostwithiel
 Wolverhampton
Major stationsPlymouth
St Austell
Truro
Falmouth
Key structuresRoyal Albert Bridge
Route mileage
185953.50 miles (86.10 km)
186365.34 miles (105.15 km)

The Cornwall Railway was a broad gauge (84) railway from Plymouth in Devon to Falmouth in Cornwall, Great Britain, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventually forced to sell its line to the dominant Great Western Railway.

It was famous for building the majestic Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar, and because of the difficult terrain it traversed, it had a large number of viaducts; because of the shortage of money these were built as timber trestle viaducts, proving to be iconic images but a source of heavy maintenance costs, eventually needing to be reconstructed in more durable materials.

Its main line was the key route to the holiday destinations of Cornwall, and in the first half of the twentieth century it carried holidaymakers in summer, as well as vegetables, fish and cut flowers from Cornwall to markets in London and elsewhere in England. The section from Truro to Falmouth, originally part of its main line, never fulfilled its potential and soon became a branch line. Nonetheless the entire route (with some minor modifications) remains open, forming part of the Cornish Main Line from Plymouth to Penzance, with the Truro to Falmouth branch continuing as the Maritime Line.

Floating the company

In the first half of the nineteenth century, Falmouth was an important landing station for shipping, and a number of schemes were developed for a railway connection from the town to London. These did not gain the financial support necessary to make progress, and in 1843 local businessmen W Tweedy and W H Bond approached the Great Western Railway (GWR) to try to induce them to fund an extension of the South Devon Railway (SDR), then only a planned railway, into Cornwall.

Direct assistance was refused, but they were encouraged to promote an independent scheme, and in the autumn of 1844 the prospectus of the Cornwall Railway was produced.

The line was to run from Plymouth crossing the Hamoaze near Torpoint, and within three-quarters of a mile of St Germans, and then via Liskeard, near Bodmin and Lostwithiel, then Par and St Austell to Truro and Falmouth. No reference was made to the means of crossing the Hamoaze, which is about 800 yards wide at that point

The company's capital was to be £900,000, of which the Great Western Railway, Bristol and Exeter Railway, Bristol and Gloucester Railway and South Devon Railway were to subscribe £250,000 together. Captain Moorsom was the Engineer.

The crossing of the Hamoaze was apparently to be by train ferry. There are references in the documentation of the time to a bridge, but this is evidently metaphorical as the Treasurer of the [existing] Torpoint Steam Ferry Company certified that "the present bridge has been in operation for ten years and has never on any occasion experienced interruption from the weather".

However when this proposal was put to Parliament, the House of Lords rejected it, and recommended that a more carefully planned scheme should be prepared, if possible avoiding the ferry across the Hamoaze.

Brunel was brought in as engineer, and he proposed a line with a bridge crossing the River Tamar about two miles above Torpoint, and with some slightly eased gradients in Cornwall, but otherwise generally following the same route. This new proposal got the Royal Assent on 3rd August 1846. The company was to have a capital of £1,600,000 of which about 15% was subscribed by the GWR, B&ER and SDR. It was to leave a junction with the South Devon company near its Plymouth station, to Falmouth, and it was to be of the broad gauge. It was to include a number of branches.

Construction starts

A Cornwall railway boundary stone near Penryn

At this time the general financial depression following the railway mania had set in, and apart from a small amount of work near St Austell, little progress in constructing the line was made.

However at a meeting in February, Brunel informed the directors that if the scheme were reduced to a single line, the whole route could be constructed for £800,000, including the Tamar crossing and all stations. Obtaining finance was still a serious obstacle, and in April 1852 the directors proposed a capital reconstruction that reduced the commitment of subscribers (many of whom had failed to respond to calls on their shares). Many subscribers defaulted on their commitment nonetheless, but the financial reconstruction enabled the directors to proceed with construction between Truro (from the West Cornwall Railway near Penwithers Junction) and St Austell, and shortly after to Liskeard, about 37 miles in total, as well as, in January 1853, the letting of a £162,000 contract for construction of the bridge over the Tamar.

However the severe shortage of money further inhibited progress, with shareholders failing to respond to calls (in which they should have paid for their shares in instalments) and by summer of 1854 more than half the company's shares had been forfeited from this cause. The directors now approached the Associated Companies (a consortium of the Great Western Railway, the Bristol & Exeter Railway and the South Devon Railway) for financial help, and in June 1855 a lease of the line was agreed, by which the Associated Companies guaranteed the Cornwall company's debentures (bank loans). This considerably eased the finanical difficulties, enabling further contracts to be let.

In October 1855 the contractor building the Tamar bridge failed, and after a delay, the company started undertaking the continuation of the work itself, under the supervision of Brunel's assistant, Robert Pearson Brereton. The huge undertaking proceeded slowly, but it was completed in 1859. The bridge is about 730 yards long, with the two great main spans each of 455 feet and numerous side spans. The total cost was £225,000. A fuller description of the bridge and its construction at Royal Albert Bridge.

East of the bridge, a the South Devon Railway had planned a Devonport branch from its Plymouth station at Millbay, opened with their line in April 1849. The Cornwall company purchased the branch from them in 1854, and extended it to join with the Tamar bridge. The South Devon company extended their station to handle the Cornwall's traffic, and agreed to use of the first half mile of their railway from Millbay to the divergence of the Cornwall Railway.

Opening at last

Cornwall Railway system showing original stations

All was practically ready now, and in a ceremony on 2nd May 1859 the Prince Consort opened the new bridge, giving consent to naming it the Royal Albert Bridge. The line was opened throughout from Plymouth to Truro for passenger trains on 4th May 1859, and goods trains started on 3rd October 1859. Passenger trains were limited to 30 mph throughout and goods trains to 15 mph; due to the shortage of money, the rolling stock fleet was very small and the train service sparse, with correspondingly low income.

St Germans station, opened in 1859 and still standing

However by August 1861 the directors of the company recorded their pleasure that large volumes of fish, potatoes and broccoli had been carried from West Cornwall. This had been transported to Truro by the West Cornwall Railway which had a line from Penzance to Truro; the West Cornwall company was a narrow gauge line, and all goods had to be transshipped into different wagons at Truro due to the break of gauge there.

Extension to Falmouth but loss of control

The directors wished to extend their line to Falmouth, the original objective of the line, but money was still very difficult to obtain, and once again the company had to resort to asking the Associated Companies for finance. This was forthcoming in return for a 1000 year lease of the line to the Associated Companies, an arrangement that was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1861. A Joint Committee of Management was set up, consisting of four Cornwall Railway directors, three from the South Devon company, three from the Bristol & Exeter and two from the Great Western.

A new start was made on constructing the Falmouth extension, and this was opened on 24th August 1863 (and for goods trains on 5th October). A new dock had been opened at Falmouth since the original plans for the railway, and despite the decline in the significance of Falmouth docks to the railway company, an extension to that location was made, and a connection to the Dock Company's own rail network was made in January 1864.[1]

The West Cornwall Railway had been opened as a standard gauge line but there was a legal provision that enabled the Cornwall Railway to demand that they install broad gauge rails. Since this was obviously conducive to more efficient operation, the Cornwall company activated the requirement. The West Cornwall company was in the same severe financial difficulty as the Cornwall Railway, and had to surrender its line to the Associated Companies, who themselves installed the broad gauge rails. Broad gauge goods trains started running on 6th November 1866 and passenger trains from 1st March 1867. This significantly improved operations and with through passenger trains running from Penzance to London, the subordinate status of the Falmouth line was emphasised: it was now in effect a branch line.

The Associated Companies amalgamated as the Great Western Railway early in 1876, and that company was now the only lessee of the Cornwall line, and the Joint Committee of Management now consisted of eight Great Western directors and four Cornwall directors.

Income creeps up but expenditure accelerates

Some small improvement in the financial situation of the company took place over the ensuing years, but the timber viaducts had always been a liability due to their very high maintenance cost, costing about £10,000 annually. Replacement of some of them on the grounds of urgent technical need had started in 1871 and was continuing progressively; they were being built of a width suitable for a double narrow gauge line, although for the time being the line was a single broad gauge line.

The work was being ordered by the Joint Committee of Management, but in November 1883, the minority Cornwall Railway directors asserted themselves and pointed out that authorising such major works was a matter for the Board of Directors instead; and the original Cornwall Railway directors were a majority there. The impasse went to arbitration and the arbitrator ruled that under the terms of the lease, the railway was to be maintained as a broad gauge line. As the ultimate cessation of broad gauge operation was by now plain, this frustrated any practical progress on the reconstructions, and in fact no new viaduct reconstructions were started as long as the Cornwall company remained in existence.[2]

In fact the separate existence of the company was nearing its end, and in 1888 ordinary shareholders accepted a cash purchase of their shares, and the Cornwall Railway Company was dissolved on 1st July 1889, the line passing fully into Great Western Railway ownership.

Now part of the Great Western Railway

The St Germans deviation

The train service during the Cornwall Railway years had been of five passsenger trains each way daily, calling at all stations; there was an additional train each way in the summer months. As well as the stations themselves there were stops at ticket platforms at Truro and Falmouth, and the journey time was two hours 30 minutes Plymouth to Truro (53 miles) and a further half hour to Falmouth (13 miles). (The service from Penzance to London was by through carriage, shunted from one train on to another.) For the time being, the Great Western Railway made no effort to improve the train service, and other issues dominated.

The decision had been taken to convert the gauge to standard, and preparations for this culminated in the prodigious task of the actual conversion of the Cornwall Railway route in common with the rest of the broad gauge parts of the route over a single weekend, opening as a standard gauge line with a full train service on the morning of Monday 23rd May 1892.

The line was single track throughout except for a little over a mile from near Millbay to Devonport, but in 1893 further sections of the line were progressively opened in double track, and by early 1904 only the Royal Albert Bridge and a section of about five miles from there to St Germans remained single. Similar work was being undertaken on the line of the former West Cornwall Railway, the route from Plymouth to Penzance now being treated as a unit.

The Saltash to St Germans section was by-passed by a deviation somewhat inland, and this deviation was opened for goods trains on 23rd March 1908 and for passenger trains on 19th May; the former route section was then closed and abandoned. This left only the Royal Albert Bridge as the only single line section on the main line to Truro (Penwithers Junction). The Falmouth branch was never doubled.

Following the amalgamation, plans were put in place for the gauge conversion, which took place over the weekend of 21 May 1892.

The replacement of the timber viaducts, started by the Cornwall Railway itself and then suspended, was resumed and between 1896 and 1904 all the remaining timber viaducts on the Plymouth to Truro line were replaced by masonry or masonry, and iron structures. However the structures on the lightly trafficked Falmouth branch continued for some years, finally being replaced by 1927.[1][3] [4]

Remaining Cornwall Railway structures

Many of the piers of Brunel's original timber viaducts remain today, having been left in place when the replacement viaduct was built alongside. Other original structures which are largely intact are the Royal Albert Bridge, many smaller masonry bridges, and the stations at Liskeard and St Germans. The stations standing at Par and Saltash were also built by the Cornwall Railway, although these were later constructions. The footbridge at St Austell is a rare example of a Great Western Railway footbridge that still retains a roof. On the Falmouth extension there is an original goods shed at Perranwell and a group of 20 workers' cottages at Falmouth.

Apart from a short branch at Keyham opened on 20 June 1867 to serve the naval dockyards, no branches were ever built by the Cornwall Railway. Independent railways did however form junctions: the West Cornwall Railway to Penzance (1859), Lostwithiel and Fowey Railway (1869), and the Newquay and Cornwall Junction Railway (1869). Other lines were proposed but failed during the economic depression following the collapse of the Overend, Gurney and Company bank, notably the Saltash and Callington Railway, and the Bodmin and Cornwall Junction Railway. The Cornwall Loop was opened at Plymouth on 17 May 1876 to avoid reversing trains in the terminus at Millbay. It was mainly used by London and South Western Railway trains at first but later found use for fast passenger and perishable goods trains.

Stations

Saltash station was rebuilt in the 1880s

Note that stations opened after 1889 were opened by the Great Western Railway or British Railways.

Rolling stock

Locomotives

Dido Class 0-6-0ST Argo

The locomotives were provided under a contract with Messrs Evans, Walker and Gooch. This enabled the expensive equipment to be provided without a huge capital outlay.[7]

The South Devon Railway took over the contract in 1867 and worked both of the companies' lines and also that of the West Cornwall Railway with one common pool of engines, although throughout both contracts the Cornwall Railway was responsible for ordering its own engines and was charged for their costs. The locomotives bought for the Cornwall Railway were:

Carriages and wagons

Carriages and wagons were bought by the Cornwall Railway and maintained at workshops established at Lostwithiel. These workshops also had equipment for preparing timber for the viaducts and permanent way.[6]

At the opening of the line there was provided 8 first class, 18 second, 16 third, and 4 composite carriages; in 1861 a post office sorting carriage was provided. These were all six-wheel vehicles. By 1889 there was 1 less second class but 3 more third class carriages plus 6 luggage vans. Initially 30 mineral and 20 cattle trucks were provided, along with 8 brake vans, 10 carriage trucks, 8 ballast trucks, and 2 timber trucks. By 1889 this fleet had grown to 421 vehicles. There were also 15 vans for carrying meat, and 9 horse boxes.[4]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cornwall Railway.

References

  1. ^ a b MacDermot, E T, History of the Great Western Railway, vol II, published by the Great Western Railway Company, London, 1931
  2. ^ Binding, John (1993). Brunel's Cornish Viaducts. Penryn: Atlantic Transport Publishers. ISBN 0-906899-56-7.
  3. ^ Osler, Edward (1982). History of the Cornwall Railway 1835-1846. Weston-super-Mare: Avon-Anglia Publications. ISBN 0-905466-48-9.
  4. ^ a b Woodfin, R. J. (1972). The Cornwall Railway; to its centenary in 1959. Truro: Bradford Barton. ISBN 0-85153-085-0. First publ. by the author in 1960 under the title The Centenary of the Cornwall Railway
  5. ^ Bennett, Alan (1990). The Great Western Railway in East Cornwall. Cheltenham: Runpast Publishing. ISBN 1-870754-11-5.
  6. ^ a b Bennett, Alan (1988). The Great Western Railway in Mid Cornwall. Southampton: Kingfisher Railway Publications. ISBN 0-946184-53-4.
  7. ^ The Locomotives of the Great Western Railway, Part 2: Broad Gauge. The Railway Correspondence and Travel Society. ISBN 0-906867-90-8.

Further reading

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