Helston Railway
Helston Railway was a British railway company based in Cornwall , England .
The first proposals for connecting Helston to the railway were based on a railway connection to Penryn . However, the projects failed due to financial problems and a lack of interest from local politics.
It was only with the boom in tourism to Lizard that the construction of a railway line began again at the end of the 1870s. Local landowners, including William Bickford Smith, W. Molesworth-St.Aubyn and William Bolitho, therefore founded the Helston Railway in 1879. A capital requirement of £ 70,000 was assumed when it was founded. An agreement to operate the line was made with the Great Western Railway . This received 50% of the income.
The company received on July 9, 1880 the concession to build a 14 km long railway line Gwinnear Road - Helston from the connection Gwinear Road on the railway line from Paddington to Penzance to Helston to the south . Construction work began on March 22, 1882. The railway line was opened on May 9, 1887. The most important goods to be transported were stones from the local quarries. Excursion traffic generated additional income in the summer.
The Great Western Railway took over the company on August 2, 1898.
A later planned extension of the route in The Lizard was no longer implemented. Instead, the GWR introduced omnibus traffic from August 17, 1903 . As part of the Beeching ax , passenger traffic was stopped on November 3, 1962, and goods traffic on October 4, 1964.
In July 2002 the Helston Railway Preservation Society was founded to set up a museum on part of the route.
literature
- Christopher Awdry: Encyclopaedia of British Railway Companies . Stephens, Wellingborough 1990, ISBN 1-85260-049-7 .
- SC Jenkins: The Helston Branch Railway . Oakwood Press, 1992, ISBN 978-0-85361-424-1 .
- V. Mitchell and K. Smith: Branch Lines to Falmouth, Helston and St. Ives . Middleton Press, 2001, ISBN 978-1-901706-74-1 .
- GA Anthony: The Hayle, West Cornwall and Helston Railways . Oakwood Press, 1968.