Cromford and High Peak Railway

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Aug 1899The new line between Parsley Hay and Ashbourne opened (southern section of the LNWR Ashbourne Line). No, thank you very much, Toodles. I will not ride down to the Junction. My bones have been sufficiently dissected; and ‘The Greyhound’ at Cromford is eloquent of a refreshing bath, and of a well-cooked dish of plump trout that were rising at flies in the cool Derwent an hour or so ago. Denis moved to Rowsley in 1960 and, three years on, Middleton Incline disappeared from the map. Hubert was soon enticed away by the bright lights of Leicester and the thrill of driving on the main line. When the High Peak finally succumbed in April 1967, just one train a week was plodding across from Buxton, bringing the men’s wages. Before and after: the engine house at the top of Middleton incline is now a designated Ancient Monument. The stationary steam engine at Middleton Top once wound wagons up the incline and still performs on Sundays and Bank Holidays during the summer, albeit running on compressed air. Incline staff, no matter how diligent, were hostages to fortune. Wagons would arrive from the quarries and, prior to their descent, were fastened by chains to a continuous wire rope. But the knots could slip, lose tension or come undone. Denis Kay holding the brake for

The C&HPR was leased by the London and North Western Railway in 1862, being taken over fully in 1887. By 1890 permission had been obtained to connect the line directly to Buxton by building a new line from Harpur Hill the two or three miles into the town centre, thus frustrating the Midland Railway's original plans for a route to Manchester. For the convenience of passengers travelling on the railway, this firm also ran a coach service between Whaley Bridge and Manchester. It is not known when these railway and coach services ceased running. By 1890 permission had been obtained to connect the line directly to Buxton by building a new line from Harpur Hill the two or three miles into the town centre, thus frustrating the Midland Railway‘s plans for a route to Manchester. Burbage Tunnel,” yells Toodles in my ear, as he opens the fire box and stands like a Salamander in a white dazzling circle of heat. But the wind has hurried away with his words. A thousand echoes are fighting with each other; the wet walls fly past like a rushing river; there is a furious whirlwind of tumult, and a damp chill that might belong to the Styx. The railway's first steam locomotive arrived in 1841 in the shape of Peak, built by Robert Stephenson and Co.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 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. For the information of these good ladies and gentlemen, the present paper should be prefaced by the remark that the High Peak Railway is purely used for goods and mineral traffic, and that passengers are not conveyed by it, although some years ago the guard was allowed to take a few people between local stations, but an accident occurred which closed the privilege.

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 By 1860 the line had six more locomotives gradually displacing the horses. These locomotives were hauled up and down the inclines along with their trains with the cables, which initially had been hemp, replacing the earlier chains, but by then were of steel.He tried to show that a railway – unyielding, noisy, repellent, and dirty – had in its hard reality an intimate connection with poetry, music tenderness, sentiment, and art; that pictures are to be seen in trains; that aching tragedies and diverting comedies are ever to be beheld on busy railway platforms, and at little wayside country stations. But there is something else to think about besides George Eliot now, oh dreamer. There is the Middleton Incline to go down. The locomotive leaves us; and down below drops the shining tract of steel, its diminishing lines a study of perspective.