The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway is a minimum-gauge heritage railway in Cumbria, England. The line runs from Ravenglass to Dalegarth Station near Boot in the valley of Eskdale, in the Lake District. At Ravenglass the line ends at Ravenglass railway station on the Cumbrian Coast Line.
Intermediate stations and halts are at Muncaster Mill, Miteside, Murthwaite, Irton Road, The Green, Fisherground and Beckfoot. The railway is owned by a private company and supported by a preservation society. The oldest locomotive is River Irt, parts of which date from 1894, while the newest is the diesel-hydraulic Douglas Ferreira, built in 2005.
The line is known locally as La'al Ratty and its gauge predecessor as Owd Ratty.
Nearby attractions include: the Roman Bath House at Ravenglass; the Hardknott Roman Fort, known to the Romans as Mediobogdum, at the foot of Hardknott Pass; the watermills at Boot and Muncaster; and Muncaster Castle, the home of the Pennington family since 1208.
History
Original railway The original Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway was authorised by the (36 & 37 Vict. c. xlviii). It was a line opened on 24 May 1875 to transport hematite iron ore from three mines near and around the village of Boot to the Furness Railway standard gauge line at Ravenglass. There has previously been a dispute about the gauge the railway was built to. It is shown as 3 feet in records but is quoted as in some books such as the ABC of Narrow Gauge Railways.Ian Allan ABC of Narrow Gauge Railways, c. 1960, pp. 49–50 This figure was believed for many years until the present company discovered a sleeper from before the line closed, with spacings between holes made by track spikes confirming the gauge was the wider one. The confusion probably stems from the fact that the line was built under the condition that it was "of a gauge not less than 2' 9" ".
Following requests from the residents of the Eskdale valley for a passenger service, the railway was upgraded to meet the minimum standards of the Board of Trade, and the first passenger trains ran in November 1876. It was the first public narrow-gauge railway in England. However, the cost of upgrading the line for passengers left the railway company with substantial debts which it was unable to pay off. The company was forced to declare itself bankrupt in 1877, although trains continued to run under the control of a series of receivers. Nonetheless, in 1880 a tramway was built connecting the line near Beckfoot railway station to newly opened mines across the River Esk at Gill Force. All but one of the iron ore mines closed within 10 years of the railway opening, and there was not enough traffic from other sources (local goods and passengers from the villages and farms of the valley) to sustain the railway. The railway "struggled on" by carrying granite from local quarries and became popular with summer tourists. The Summer 1898 Furness Railway timetable shows five weekday trains along the line with three on Sundays.
In 1905, a passenger train was derailed at Murthwaite due to a combination of a defective locomotive and defective track. By 1908 the track-work was in such poor condition, it was declared unsafe for passengers by the Board of Trade. The railway closed to passengers that year. Goods trains continued to run whilst attempts were made to raise money to rebuild the railway. These attempts failed, and the railway closed completely in April 1913.
Conversion to 15 inch gauge
In 1915, the abandoned railway was taken over by the model maker Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke and his business partner Robert Proctor-Mitchel. They began converting the line to the gauge that it is today. The first train operated over the regauged line on 28 August 1915, running initially to Muncaster Mill. By 1917, the entire line had been converted and trains were running along the whole length to Boot. However, the gradients on the final section of the line proved to be too steep for the smaller locos, and the railway was cut back to Beckfoot in 1918. Initially, services were operated using the Bassett-Lowke-built, 1/4 scale 4-4-2 Sans Pareil. This was later joined by another Bassett-Lowke loco, Colossus (a 4-6-2 version of Sans Pareil), as well as 2 locos and rolling stock from Sir Arthur Heywood's Duffield Bank line, following Sir Arthur's death in 1916. These were the 0-6-0 tank engine Ella, and the 0-8-0 tank engine Muriel, whose frames and running gear were later rebuilt as River Irt. Another Heywood loco, an 0-4-0 tank engine called Katie, was acquired from the Eaton Hall Railway in Cheshire, whilst another 4-6-2 tender loco, Sir Aubrey Brocklebank, was constructed for the railway, and named after the railway's financial backer, a wealthy shipping owner who lived nearby at Irton Hall.
As well as passengers, the line transported goods and mail to and from the valley. In 1922 a granite quarry was opened at Beckfoot, and the railway was used to transport the granite between Beckfoot Quarry and a crushing plant at Murthwaite. From 1929, the track between Murthwaite and Ravenglass was converted to dual gauge, with track straddling the gauge rails. A diesel locomotive was obtained in 1929 to work this section.
Brocklebank ownership
In the mid-1920s, the railway was taken over by Sir Aubrey Brocklebank, who also owned the quarry at Beckfoot. Under his ownership the line went through a number of changes. By 1926, the line had been extended along the route of the former Gill Force Tramway to its present terminus at Dalegarth Station. Large sections of the line were relaid with surplus rails from World War I light railways, and the railway was realigned in several places to remove some of the steepest gradients and sharper curves.
The station at Ravenglass was rebuilt to better handle the increasing number of passengers, and new steam and diesel locomotives were purchased to work the line, including River Esk (built in 1923), whilst the older locos were withdrawn and either rebuilt (in the case of Muriel into River Irt), or used to build new locos (in the case of the first River Mite). Following Sir Aubrey's death in 1929, control of the railway passed into the hands of his business partners, who lacked the local interest that Sir Aubrey had, and no further investment was made, other than what was needed for essential maintenance.
When World War II broke out in 1939, passenger trains were suspended for the duration of the conflict, and the steam locos were mothballed. Granite trains continued to run to support the war effort. In 1946, passenger trains began to run again using one of the diesels, with River Irt returning to service in 1947. River Esk did not return to service until the early 1950s, whilst the first River Mite had been permanently withdrawn and dismantled.
In 1949, the last of Sir Aubrey's business partners died, and the railway was sold to the Keswick Granite Company, who wanted to gain control of the quarrying side of the business. However, due to the lack of investment since the 1920s, much of the equipment in the quarry and crushing plant was worn out and in need of replacement. Rather than make the required investment, Keswick Granite chose to close the quarry in 1953, but kept the passenger trains running in the summer months. From 1958 attempts were made to sell the line as a going concern, but the asking price was too high. Finally in 1960, Keswick Granite announced that the railway would be sold by auction in September of that year. It was also announced that if a buyer could not be found for the line as a whole, then the railway would be closed and sold off as 60 separate lots.
Preservation Locals and railway enthusiasts formed the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway Preservation Society to save the line, with financial backing by Sir Wavell Wakefield, Member of Parliament (MP) for Marylebone and owner of the Ullswater Steamers, and Colin Gilbert, a stockbroker. These efforts were successful, and at the auction in September 1960, the society made the winning bid and saved the railway from closure. Control of the railway passed to a new private company, with the backing of the preservation society, an arrangement that is still in place.
When the new owners took control of the railway in 1961, the railway was in poor condition, suffering from the lack of investment since the late 1920s. There were only two steam locomotives, River Esk and River Irt, both of which were well worn and in need of overhauls. To allow for an expanded timetable, the preservation society raised funds to build a third steam locomotive. River Mite () entered service in 1967 and, although owned by the society, has been on permanent loan to the company ever since. The two existing steam locos would be rebuilt with new boilers and tenders in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1968, the death of Colin Gilbert led to the railway company becoming the property of Sir Wavell Wakefield, who by that stage had become Lord Wakefield of Kendal. In the early 1970s it became apparent that, with passengers rising, another locomotive was required. This time the company constructed the locomotive itself. Northern Rock (2-6-2) was complete in time for centenary celebrations in 1976. A further addition was made in 1980 when the company constructed the B-B diesel locomotive Lady Wakefield.
Other significant locomotives include Bonnie Dundee, built in 1900 as a -gauge tank locomotive before being donated to the R&ER by a member and converted to -gauge, later converted again from tank to tender configuration; Synolda, (renamed Prince Charles) a twin to the original loco Sans Pareil, built in 1912, saved from Belle Vue Zoo in 1978 and now in the railway museum; Shelagh of Eskdale, a diesel built in 1969 incorporating parts of the Heywood loco Ella; Perkins, a rebuilt locomotive, which started as a quarry shunter before being rebuilt into the steam-outlined Passenger Tractor and then again in 1984 into its current guise; Douglas Ferreira, a B-B diesel loco constructed in 2005 and named after the general manager of the R&ER from 1961 to 1994. The most recent addition to the loco fleet is Whillan Beck, a 4-6-2 tender loco built by Krauss in Munich in 1929, which entered service at Ravenglass in 2018.
Since the 1960s, the condition of the railway has been significantly improved and visitors have increased. Most of the work to rebuild the railway was overseen by Douglas Ferreira, who was the general manager between 1961 and 1994. Today, there are 120,000 passengers each year with up to 16 trains daily in summer. Trains run most of the year; the railway is only closed in January.
In October 1998, the railway's engines River Mite, Northern Rock, and Cyril were taken to Germany for a period of excursions on the Dresden Park Railway, a former Pioniereisenbahn in Dresden. Whilst in Dresden, the locomotives ran with two of that lines Krauss & Co. built locomotives dating from 1925. In 2016, the R&ER was able to purchase a sister engine, built by Krauss & Co. in 1929 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 in Seville, Spain. Since its arrival in Cumbria, this locomotive has been named Whillan Beck.
In early 2020, the railway was forced to temporarily suspend all trains due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent UK-wide lockdown. This was the first time since the Second World War that passenger trains had been forcibly suspended for such a prolonged period. Following the relaxation of lockdown restrictions in July 2020, passenger trains resumed on 30 July.
Gilbert's Cutting