The Ballochney Railway was an early railway built near Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was intended primarily to carry minerals from coal and ironstone pits, and stone quarries, in the area immediately north and east of Airdrie, to market, predominantly over the adjoining Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. Passengers were carried later.
Trains were pulled by horses at first, although locomotives were employed later on. The mineral extraction was located in high ground and rope-worked inclines were incorporated into the line to bring loaded wagons down. The line used the track gauge of , which was already in use on the Monkland and Kirkintilloch line.
It opened in 1828, and in 1848 it amalgamated with two associated railways, forming the Monkland Railways. All of the route is now closed, although much of it can still be discovered.
Origins
In 1794 the Monkland Canal was completed, enabling the cheap transport of coal from the Monklands coalfields, south of Airdrie, to the households and industries of Glasgow. Advantageous at first, in time the canal was accused of exploiting its monopoly, and in 1824 the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway (M&KR) was opened, connecting the coalfields to the Forth and Clyde Canal at Kirkintilloch; onward conveyance by canal barge from there to Glasgow and Edinburgh was possible.
Ironstone was also smelted on a small scale at first, and from 1828 James Beaumont Neilson developed the hot blast process of iron smelting, and iron manufacture quickly became a huge industry, centred on Coatbridge, and the found itself at the centre of this massive industry, connected at first to all the local sources of coal and iron, and to the ironworks.
Coal was already extracted on a small scale in New Monkland, north and east of Airdrie and not directly accessible to the , and Thomas Grainger, the engineer of the , prepared a pamphlet proposing a railway from the New Monkland pits to connect with the . Construction was promised to be cheap, and the (7 Geo. 4. c. xlviii) of 5 May 1826 authorised the construction by a new company, the Ballochney Railway Company, with share capital of £18,425 and borrowing powers of £10,000.Don Martin, The Monkland and Kirkintilloch and Associated Railways, Strathkelvin Public Libraries, Kirkintilloch, 1995, Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland, Edinburgh 1846
The Ballochney Railway was to connect the pits to the at an end-on junction at Kipps, between Coatbridge and Airdrie. Money was scarce at the time, and the Forth and Clyde Canal company had agreed to subscribe for stock in February 1826. £3,300 was subscribed by English investors. The engineer was to be Grainger.
As was usual, the act laid down maximum toll rates for the railway: "For all Goods, Wares, , Coal and other Things: 3d per Ton, per Mile. For passing up or down any one of the Inclined Planes, or for any part of one, and for every Inclined Plane, 6d in addition."
Four contracts were let to construct the line from Kipps on the to "Airdrie Depot", i.e. the Leaend depot near Mosside Farm; from there to the top of the inclined plane at Rawyards; from there to Ballochney; and the Clarkston branch. A branch to Whiterigg and StanriggThese places were spelt Whiterig and Standrig in documents at the time had been authorised in the Ballochney Railway Act 1826, but it was not made at this time.
Birkinshaw's patent malleable rails were ordered, as used on the . These had been a considerable technological advance on the cast iron rails used previously. The rails were and long, but there was a subsequent change to and long. This change may reflect improvements in manufacturing capability, which must have been at its technical limit at the time.
Opening Describing the railway, says that "It was commenced in the summer of 1826 and opened to the public on 8 August 1828", but Martin states authoritatively that this represents the final completion of the construction of the whole line. "Revenue-earning traffic on the railway actually commenced very much earlier, on 12 November 1827" although this may only have been over a short distance from Kipps Colliery to the junction with the .
The line was about in extent,Whishaw: 1842 and it included two self-acting inclined planes to gain altitude in reaching the high ground where the mines were located.
Operation The railway operated like a toll road; independent hauliers were permitted to place wagons on the line and haul them with their own horses to the destination, paying the company a toll for the facility. The track used edge rails, in which the wagon wheels had flanges for guidance (as opposed to a plateway, where plain wheels run on the flat of an L-shaped plate) so that the wagons were specific to railway use, and the company hired wagons to the hauliers. Whishaw recorded that there were 270 wagons in use on the system, each weighing about 24 cwt (1200 kg); the horses in use belonged to the coal proprietors, not the railway itself. Wagon rental to hauliers accounted for 8.4% of the company's revenue in the first seven years.Company accounts, quoted in
On 1 January 1830 the motive power owned by the company was entirely equine, consisting of Hector, Dick, , Darling, Prince, Diamond, Rattler, Brisk and . (Independent traders had their own stable.) These horses worked through as far as Kirkintilloch on the system, but when the acquired locomotives in 1831 that railway worked trains over the Ballochney system as far as the foot of the inclines. In 1832 the company disposed of its horses, leaving all the horse power provision to independent hauliers.
says that "A useful contrivance, [represented in an engraving in the original], has been here adopted for the ease of the animal in descending; instead of causing it to run behind the waggon, a carriage is made, in which the horse stands at his ease all the time the waggons are descending, and starts perfectly fresh to his task of drawing them back. This plan was first practised in North America on the Mauchunk Railway." The reference is to the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway.
This system was still in use on 21 July 1841, when a child called Margaret McWakenshaw "unloosed a horse-carriage from a train of waggons" and was injured when then trying to prevent it running away down the line.
In 1836 the maintenance of the track was put out to contract.
The company became relatively prosperous: even in 1831 it paid a dividend of 1%, and 4% the following year. In the period 1838 to 1842 it was paying dividends of 14–16%, and when the connecting Slamannan Railway was promoted, the Ballochney company was able to contribute half the capital for that line.J Butt and J T Ward, The Promotion of the Caledonian Railway, Transport History 3, 1970, quoted in
Writing in 1842, Whishaw states that the line had been chiefly worked by horses, but had then been prepared for locomotive operation on the upper section of about ; it had an inclination of 1 in 70. The preparation involved installing heavier rails, for the upper section now had rails compared with the original fishbelly rails of . This upper section was double track. The gauge of the railway was , with the interval between tracks .
The observations regarding preparation for locomotive operation seem to be contradicted by : "... in spite of the powers for steam haulage in the Ballochney act, the existence of the double plane in the centre of the line shows that it was planned for horses. When it was strengthened for the introduction of locomotives in 1840, the work was only done as far as the foot of the inclines. The upper Ballochney, and the Slamannan beyond it, were for the time being left for horses". In an endnote adds, "The Ballochney main lines were worked by gravity; there was also one worked by a stationary steam engine on the Rochsoles branch. Though the Garnkirk & Glasgow ran trains over the Ballochney Railway to Airdrie, they had to use horse haulage on this section."Parliamentary Papers 1840 XIII, Select Committee on Railway Communication, evidence, QQ.4082-6 (Charles A King) quoted in
states that locomotives were introduced on the Ballochney line in 1840., table 14.
Rates for coal and lime were 3.75d for the first mile, 1.75d for the second, 1.25 for the third, fourth and fifth miles, 0.75d for the sixth and seventh, and 0.5d thereafter. For grain and manufactured textiles, the rate was 2.75d for the first mile, and 2.25d per mile thereafter.
Inclines Whishaw describes the rope-worked incline: "There is a self-acting plane of in length on that portion of the line next the Monkland [and Kirkintilloch] Railway;This is sometimes described as two inclined planes, end to end the lower part being a single way, the middle part double, and the upper part formed with three rails. The ascending train consists usually of four loaded wagons and the descending train of six or seven empty wagons; the time occupied in the ascent is 3•50 minutes; the rope used is about circumference; the are of diameter, and are placed at intervals of 21 feet."
PriestleyJoseph Priestley, A Historical Account of the Navigable Rivers, Canals, and Railways, of Great Britain, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, London, 1831 states that this was a rise of from the junction with the to Arbuckle (on the extension which he regards as the main line).
The Garnkirk and Glasgow Railway was operating passenger trains to Leaend and complained about the safety of its passengers to the Ballochney Company:
The Conductors of the Passenger Carriages have still no notice by lights or otherwise of the approach or position of waggons coming down the "Incline", or proceeding to the Kipps, neither have they notice to avoid the waggons which are sometimes temporarily stationary on the line on their way to Kipps.Letter G&GR to Ballochney Railway, December 1841, quoted in Martin (1995)
The "waggons which are sometimes temporarily stationary" seems to mean individual wagons left unattended on the running line.
There was an accident on the incline on 25 April 1859 (after the amalgamation of the Ballochney to form the Monkland Railways) and the Inquiry report describes operation of the incline. Colonel Yolland of the Board of Trade explains that the Ballochney main line has two inclines on it, with a space of about 100 yards of comparative level between them "at a place called Common Head", and that the Airdrie branch diverges there.
At the foot of the second [lower] incline, there is about of line used by up and down trains, and at the east and west extremities of this portion of single line there are sets of points facing to all trains descending the second incline. The construction of these inclines is also very peculiar and such as I have not hitherto met with. At the lower end of each incline, the up and down lines of railway, or rather the north and south lines of railway, since from the mode of working they are alternately used for up and down trains, are placed at an interval of about apart; but at from the top of the first, and from the top of the second incline, this interval or space is altogether done away with, and the single centre rail serves for the inner wheels of ascending or descending tracks, carriages, &c.
The two inclines are separately worked, in each case by means of a wire-rope, with a short piece of chain at each end; the loaded waggons going down the incline serving, by means of the wire-rope passing over a wheel or drum at the head of the incline, to bring up the waggons from below. Rollers are placed between the rails for supporting these wire-ropes as they are drawn up or down. The rope at the tail of each descending train being cast off, as soon as the train reaches the comparatively level portion of line at the foot of each incline, and before it descends so low as to foul the upper end of the wire-rope at the wheel or drum.