The Port Carlisle Branch

Our long holiday in 2022 was spent in the far North of Scotland. We stopped off to break the return journey close to Carlisle at a B&B in a hamlet called Boustead Hill adjacent to the Solway Firth.

This gave me an opportunity to find out more about the Port Carlisle Branch which was built on the line of the old canal between Carlisle and Port Carlisle.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/18/the-port-carlisle-railway-part-1

 

For around fifty years the passenger rail service to Port Carlisle was provided by a a horse drawn dandy carriages. ....

One of these Dandy carriages is preserved in the National Railway Museum in York.

The linked article focusses on this horse-drawn service. ....

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/18/the-port-carlisle-railway-part-2

 

Interesting parallel to be drawn with the Fintona branch (a branch of the GNRI's 'Derry Road'), where the passenger service was maintained by a horse tram, which subsequently found it's way to Cultra, where it survives to this day. In another quirk, every horse which ever pulled the tram was "Dick"!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rgadsdon/38638828720

Oddly, the freight service on the branch were ...... well, ordinary ..... operated down the years by the usual assortment of AL/PG/SG/UG 0-6-0 locos found along the Dundalk- Enniskillen- Omagh / Portadown- Omagh- Derry lines.

 

It is an interesting parallel that would be worth Futher investigation!

And it seems to have lasted well into the 20th century!

 

After 1914 and the reintroduction of steam power on the branch, there was a short period during the later part of the First World War when the line to Port Carlisle was closed. When it reopened, the hoped for increased passenger traffic never materialised. As the 1920s wore on, the LNER decided that it would replace locomotive power on the branch with steam railcars.

The first was 'Nettle', the second, 'Flower of Yarrow'.

http://rogerfarnworth.com/2022/05/19/the-port-carlisle-railway-part-3

Sadly, their introduction did not significantly improve the financial position and the length of the line from Drumburgh to Port Carlisle was closed in 1932. .....