Cromford and High Peak Railway

I have already mentioned that we walked along part of the line of the Cromford and High Peak Railway recently.

This was built to link the Cromford Canal at Cromford, Derbyshire, with the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge, which at the time was in Cheshire. The original plan, in the 1820s, was to build a canal, but the railway worked out at about a fifth of the cost.


The railway was built along very similar lines to a contour canal, and included the tightest curves of any railway in the country. Where flights of locks would have been, the trains were hauled up and lowered down inclined planes. The above photo is of the engine house at the top of Sheep Pasture incline.

The incline is at about 1 in 8, one of the steepest and longest on the railway. This is it, but it's difficult to see how steep the slope is when there are no references.


I was surprised to see an old crane about half way down; would they really have stopped on the incline for loading etc.?


At the bottom is a catch pit to trap runaway wagons. A pointsman would have judged the speed of descending wagons, and, if all was in order, he would pull over points to let the train bypass the catch pit. It seems that the default setting was straight into the pit!


And here's one which crashed earlier.


The railway was built to standard 4' 8½" gauge and had the highest summit level in the country. When it opened, in another parallel with canals, wagons were pulled by horses along the level sections; the 33 mile journey taking two days. One day I'd like to cycle along the entire route. I'd like to think I'd be able to do it in considerably less time!

I have taken much of the information for this post from Peter Whitehead's excellent article on the Inland Waterways Protection Society pages of David Kitching's website.

Peter Whitehead has also written in great detail about the Peak Forest Tramway, which ran to Bugsworth Basin, just round the corner from Whaley Bridge on the Peak Forest Canal. He gives very useful information about how early tramways were constructed, and explains why remnants you might stumble across today look as they do.