Cornwall Railway
The Cornwall Railway was a broad gauge railway from Plymouth in Devon to Falmouth in Cornwall, England, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventually forced to sell its line to the dominant Great Western Railway.
The Cornwall Railway was famous for building the majestic Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar and, because of the difficult terrain it traversed, it had a large number of viaducts, built as timber trestles because of the shortage of money. They proved to be iconic structures, but were a source of heavy maintenance costs, eventually needing to be reconstructed in more durable materials.
Its main line was the key route to many of the holiday destinations of Cornwall, and in the first half of the 20th century it carried holidaymakers in summer, as well as vegetables, fish and cut flowers from Cornwall to markets in London and elsewhere in England. The section from Truro to Falmouth, originally part of its main line, never fulfilled its potential and soon became a branch line. Nonetheless the entire route remains open, forming part of the Cornish Main Line from Plymouth to Penzance. The Truro to Falmouth branch continues: the passenger service on it is branded the Maritime Line.
General description
The Cornwall Railway was conceived because of fears that Falmouth would lose out, as a port, to Southampton. Falmouth had for many years had nearly all of the packet trade: dispatches from the Colonies and overseas territories arrived by ship and were conveyed to London by road coach. The primitive roads of those days made this a slow business and Southampton was developing in importance. The completion of the London and Southampton Railway in 1840 meant that dispatches could be taken on to London swiftly by train.Controversy over the route
At first the promoters wanted the most direct route to London, even if that meant building a line all the way there, bypassing important towns in Cornwall and Devon. Before the interested parties could raise the money and get parliamentary authority for their line, the Government actually removed the bulk of the packet trade to Southampton, so that most of the income for any new line was removed. Some interests continued to press for the best line to London, hoping that the packet trade would return; if necessary they would link with another new railway, but the huge cost of this proved impossible to raise. A more practical scheme running to Plymouth gradually took priority, and at first the trains were to cross the Hamoaze, the body of water at the mouth of the River Tamar on a steam ferry. This was shown to be unrealistic, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was called in to resolve the difficulty. He designed the bridge over the River Tamar at Saltash, the Royal Albert Bridge: when it was built it was the most prodigious engineering feat in the world. He also improved the details of the route elsewhere. By reaching Plymouth, the company could connect with the South Devon Railway and on to London over the Bristol and Exeter railway and the Great Western Railway. The line was built on the broad gauge.Deprived of the lucrative packet trade, the promoters now discovered that it was impossible to raise the money needed to build the line, and there was considerable delay until the economy of the country improved. The object of linking Falmouth to London was quietly dropped, and the line was built from Truro to Plymouth. At Truro another railway, the West Cornwall Railway, fed in, linking Penzance to the network. Falmouth was much later connected too, but only by a branch line.
Brunel designs a practical route
The terrain crossed by the railway was exceptionally difficult because of the number of north-south valleys intersecting the route. Because of the extreme shortage of money when the railway was being built, Brunel designed timber trestle viaducts; these were much cheaper but they incurred heavy maintenance costs and were eventually reconstructed in masonry or brick, or in a few cases made into embankments. The spindly appearance of these high viaducts made passengers nervous, but they provided a marked impression associated with the line. The shortage of money at construction also forced the company to install single track only.Once in operation, the line was still short of money, but it made some progress in converting the viaducts to more durable materials, and in doubling some sections of the route, but the need to convert to standard gauge in addition was too much and the company was obliged to sell out to the Great Western Railway.
If the original plan had been to carry the packet trade, the railway as built developed a considerable agricultural business when it emerged that horticultural produce could be got to London markets quickly. In addition, holiday trade developed as Cornwall became a desirable holiday destination, and as numerous resorts served directly by the railway found favour. The area became branded as "the Cornish Riviera", rivalling the French Riviera for the well to do and the middle classes. Many branch lines were built to coastal resorts, nearly all by independent companies or later by the Great Western Railway.
The twentieth century
In the twentieth century the Great Western Railway encouraged these two traffics by running fast goods trains from the area to London and other population centres, and by heavily marketing the holiday opportunities of Cornwall and providing imaginative train services for the purpose. Mineral traffic developed too.Having been built cheaply, the route was difficult to operate as speeds and traffic density increased, as many sharp curves and very steep gradients militated against efficient operation. On summer Saturdays in later years serious delay due to congestion. Although the Great Western Railway made some improvements in capital schemes in Cornwall, the constructed topography of the main line made large scale improvement prohibitively expensive.
From the mid-1960s when holidaymakers began to look abroad for holidays in the sun, the Cornish Riviera inevitably declined, although a significant residual traffic remains. The mineral traffic also continues. Through passenger trains from London continue to operate and the original Cornwall railway route remains the backbone of rail business in the County.
Origins
At the time of the accession of Victoria to the throne in 1837, Falmouth was the largest population centre in Cornwall, at 12,000. It had been an important victualling station for merchant shipping during the Napoleonic Wars, but Southampton was increasingly favoured for the continuing packet traffic, due to its more convenient road and coastal shipping connection to London. Although official assurances had been given about the retention of certain traffics, the construction of the London and Southampton Railway, seriously proposed in 1830 and completed in 1840, alarmed interested businessmen in Falmouth, and it was generally agreed that a railway connection to London was urgently needed.Early proposals, in 1835 and 1836, for the railway favoured a route broadly following the Old Road through Launceston and Okehampton, and on to Basingstoke or Reading. This huge undertaking failed for lack of funds, but it established the presumption that the part of this route west of Exeter, the Central Route, was the natural choice, and that the coastal route was not. The Central Route had the principal advantage of providing the shortest route to London, as the object was to secure the packet traffic. The intermediate terrain was largely unpopulated; the route traversed high altitudes, but the topography was easier than a route following the south coast because of the multiple valleys and river inlets near the coast.
Later proposals were put forward, now reduced to joining the London and South Western Railway near Exeter; the L&SWR was very gradually extending westward, but these proposals all failed for lack of financial support. Nonetheless a Committee to form a Cornwall Railway had been formed and Captain William Moorsom had prepared detailed plans for a route.
False starts in Parliament
On 29 May 1842 the government announced that nearly all the packet traffic would be transferred to Southampton. The traffic forecast for the Cornwall Railway had assumed an income of £123,913 out of total income of £160,548. Thus the Central Route, by-passing the south Cornwall population centres, had lost 80% of its potential income at a stroke. At the same time, the Bristol and Exeter Railway had reached Exeter, and the South Devon Railway to connect to Plymouth was definitely planned. A southerly route for the Cornwall Railway, to reach Plymouth, would secure considerable intermediate traffic, and shorten the route that the company would need to construct.In August 1843 W. Tweedy, chairman of the Cornwall Railway provisional committee, and William H. Bond, its secretary, approached the Great Western Railway and found that the GWR was favourable to the idea of a connection between the Cornwall Railway and the South Devon line, but only if the Cornwall Railway adopted the southern route.
Crossing the Hamoaze
Direct assistance was refused, but they were encouraged to promote an independent scheme, and in the autumn of 1844 the prospectus of the Cornwall Railway was produced. The committee had firmly favoured the southern route, but many interested parties continued to support the northern alignment. Indeed this controversy dogged the company for years, even extending to supporters of the northern route opposing the Cornwall Railway bill in Parliament. Moorsom designed a route with constant sharp curves and exceptionally steep gradients, which exposed him to criticism by respected railway engineers.The line was put forward for the 1845 session of Parliament. Captain Moorsom was again the Engineer. The line was to run from Eldad in Plymouth, the intended western terminus of the South Devon Railway, to Falmouth. From Eldad it was to descend at 1 in 30 to reach the steam chain ferry at Torpoint, or "New Passage", and run westwards, south of the River Lynher, climbing to cross Polbathick Creek by a wooden drawbridge, to St Germans. From a few miles west of that point, it would follow the course of the present-day route, but with more numerous and sharper curves and steeper gradients, via Liskeard, near Bodmin and Lostwithiel, then Par and St Austell to near Probus. From that point the line would have diverged to Tresillian, crossing the Truro River by a 600 feet viaduct south of the city, to Penryn, crossing the Penryn River from the north by embankment and drawbridge to enter Falmouth.
The Torpoint ferry had been in operation since at least 1834, having been developed by J M Rendel. Moorsom appears not to have given much thought to the practicalities of using the crossing, which would have involved through trains being divided and each portion then being propelled down a very steep gradient onto the ferry boat; and each portion being hauled up a steep gradient and re-formed on the other side.
The supporters of the Central Route were able to point out the practical difficulties; Rendel himself gave evidence:
Mr Rendell, engineer, deposed that he constructed the present steam ferry boats or bridges at the Hamoaze. These were worked by chains, which extended to either shore; and when wind and tide was strong, the chains formed a species of arc, and the platform was not at right angles with the landing place. Considerable difficulty would therefore arise in bringing the rails of the bridge so immediately in contact with the rails of the landing place, that the trains might easily and safely run on and off the bridge; besides that, a difficulty arose from the great fall in the tide, which at spring was no less than. was of opinion that by a train being stopped, divided, and placed upon the steam bridge, and landed on the opposite side of the Hamoaze, tackled together, and put in motion, a great delay would be occasioned, independent of the seven or eight minutes in crossing, of from eight to twelve minutes on each side.