Cromford and High Peak Railway

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The hook is coupled to the wagons. Off we glide. The cable swings and clangs ominously as it strikes the steel rollers, which seem to say “Caution!” in a metallic voice that keeps repeating itself all the way down. six tons per waggon. This necessarily confined the weight of the engine to about the same. The difficulty of passing the curves has been surmounted by using smaller wheels than to the Peak Forest Canal, at or near to Whaley (otherwise Yeardsley-cum-Whaley), in the County Palatine of Chester. This line features a 1 in 27 gradient and there are two operational passenger locomotives as well as two works locomotives and others are under restoration. Two extensions to this line are being studied, one is to the

A recent project by English Heritage was to carry out a heritage audit of both the Cromford and High Peak Railway and the Peak Forest Tramway and this took the form of an archaeological survey of each of them. From Whaley Bridge, it is a one-mile walk along the towpath of the Peak Forest Canal to visit the Ancient Monument of Bugsworth Basin at the terminus of the main line of the canal. Runaways were rare but always spectacular. Shortly after dark on 1st March 1888 – before the catchpit had been dug – a chain broke with catastrophic consequences. A wagon full of lime and brake van containing gunpower hurtled down the incline, reaching a speed calculated at 120mph. At the bottom they derailed, launched themselves over the canal and disintegrated, scattering remains across the main line. There can be no doubt that the Present Writer ought to have been punished for so flagrant a piece of printed audacity by being suitably maimed in a railway collision, or sent over the Tay Bridge with that awful ‘flash of light’ on that trade December night at the close of I879.The railway would be powered by horses on the flat sections and stationary steam engines on the nine inclined planes, apart from the last incline into Whaley Bridge, which was counterbalanced and worked by a horse-gin. The engines, rails and other ironwork were provided by the Butterley Co. It would take around two days to complete the 33 mile journey. The source of power for the Wirksworth Branch incline is rather enigmatic. The ' engine house' consisted of a large stone-built plinth surmounted by a concrete floor, on top of which stood a complex framework Another locomotive is waiting to take us on, and I am making friends with the two fresh engine men, greasier and grittier than the last, and am learning to balance myself on another quivering foot-board, as we pant through a wild, bleak, hilly country. and Buxton, at a rate of from 10 to 12 miles per hour, so as to enable the company to transport goods and passengers to Whalley-bridge in a few hours, instead of two days, which it now usually takes. When the railway first opened, waggons were hauled by horses along the more level sections and afterwards by steam locomotives. To begin with, it took about two days to traverse its full length.

The locomotive is an unidentified Class J94, 0-6-0ST. This class was introduced in 1943 and they were bought from the Ministry of Supply in 1946. The scenery, truth to tell, has not been specially attractive during the last few miles. There has been none of these poetic vignettes and glowing wood, that make the ride in a Midland carriage from Derby to Marple such a rich railway romance. Rather a monotonous table-land where niggard fields and stubborn heath are ruled off with bleak stone-walls, and the perspective is unbroken save here and there by a clump of storm-rent ragged pines. In two or three hours’ ride the traveller might exchange a bleak, treeless region, Intersected by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the shelter of woods, or up swelling hills… The day ran to a script written by the Traffic Inspector – an intricately woven plot featuring water, coal, stone and timber. Shunts here, run-arounds there. Quarry loads to marshal and weigh. Crippled wagons to sort. Down to the junction, return with empties. Drop off corn at Cromford Goods. The ups and downs of the incline. It was a mundane existence, offering little satisfaction and even less money. But laughs were plentiful. Nevertheless, this was not the first passenger service on the railway. It seems that German Wheatcroft & Sons operated the first service under contract and this commenced in May 1833.

The challenging route made for tiring and time-consuming journeys. Corble explains: ‘Early railways were built like early canals, following the contours of the land. This made sense for carrying goods safely on water, but it meant the railway was terribly slow.’ The line’s original locomotives didn’t help. Corble continues: ‘I love that you follow the High Peak Trail picturing trains, but the curves are so tight and the inclines so steep you wonder how trains used it. The answer is that at first, the railway was horse-drawn.’ Traffic - by now almost exclusively from local quarries - was slowly decreasing during the Beeching era, the first section of the line being closed in 1963. This was the rope worked 1 in 8 Middleton Incline. The rest of the line was fully closed in spring 1967, including the 1 in 8 Sheep Pasture Incline and the Hopton Incline. We have already alluded to the difficulties grappled with; the acuteness of the curves, and the equally formidable one of the weakness of the rails, being cast-iron, calculated only for weights not exceeding

Arguably Jessop Senior fathered the modern railway. In 1789 he brought together edged rail and flanged wheel on a line at Loughborough and, fourteen years later, opened the world’s first public railway in South London, with horses providing the motive power. of this line, to induce the proprietors to employ steam instead of animal power. Great and important were the difficulties to be overcome in the adoption of such power Whaley BridgeHorse gin, also known as a horse capstan or horse whim. Gradient 1 in 13½, 180 yards long. Where is the stout old lady who is always so anxious about her luggage: three boxes, a carpet-bag, and a basket, all with a bit of red flannel tied to the handles? And where is the crimson apoplectic person, with umbrella and carpet-bag, who rushes up to the train just in time to behold it pass away without him?

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At the end of the half-day session, you’ll end up with a wonderful hand-made object that you can take away with you! Repairing the roof at High Peak Junction workshops