The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&CR) was a main line railway opened between Lancaster and Carlisle in 1846. With its Scottish counterpart, the Caledonian Railway, the Company launched the first continuous railway connection between the English railway network and the emerging network in central Scotland. The selection of its route was controversial, and strong arguments were put forward in favour of alternatives, in some cases avoiding the steep gradients, or connecting more population centres. Generating financial support for such a long railway was a challenge, and induced the engineer Joseph Locke to make a last-minute change to the route: in the interests of economy and speed of construction, he eliminated a summit tunnel at the expense of steeper gradients.
The sparseness of the population discouraged the addition of branch lines, with a small number of exceptions, although several east-west secondary routes made independent connection to the route. Establishing a joint station at Carlisle with the three other railway companies terminating there, seemed obviously appropriate, but proved hugely difficult, and the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway funded the main station practically single-handedly, in the face of outright obstruction.
The line was electrified in 1974 and at the present day is a key part of the West Coast Main Line, carrying long-distance passenger and freight trains.
Extending northwards In 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, heralding a new age of steam powered public railways. It did not take many years for a railway network to form, and by October 1838 it reached Preston, enabling through journeys from London. On 26 June 1840 the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway further extended the network north as far as Lancaster.
Already in 1835 many observers saw that a trunk line connecting England and Scotland could be expected soon; surveys had already been carried out and routes suggested. George Stephenson had developed two routes, a direct one via Shap following the valley of the River Lune. This involved steep gradients, which Stephenson disliked, and he preferred a route crossing Morecambe Bay by a long barrage, and round the Cumberland coast. This had much easier gradients and would serve numerous populated settlements, but at the expense of considerable extra distance. Stephenson's proposals were not carried forward at this stage. Joseph Locke carried out a series of assessments of practicable routes in the years 1835 to 1837, not all of them actual surveys. In particular, on 4 November 1836 Joseph Locke was commissioned by the Grand Junction Railway to "report on the practicability of making a railway communication between Preston and Glasgow". He proposed a route passing east of Lancaster and running up the valley of the River Lune past Kirkby Lonsdale. There was to be a summit tunnel at Shap, miles long, after which the line would descend through Bampton, Askham and Penrith into Carlisle. The steepest gradients were to be 1 in 100. His report was well received, but no progress was made at this stage.
In 1837 George Stephenson was commissioned by interests in the Whitehaven area to design a route round the coast of Cumberland linking with the Maryport and Carlisle Railway. Stephenson was sceptical about the ability of locomotives of the day to ascend gradients, and he was happy to prepare a route that followed the coast closely, crossing Morecambe Bay from Poulton-le-Sands to Humphrey Head, crossing to Ulverston and then tunnelling under the Furness peninsula and crossing the Duddon Estuary, next following round the Cumberland coast to Whitehaven, where a railway from Carlisle was already proposed. Modifications to that prodigious scheme were put forward the following year.
At the time Kendal was a significant community of 9,000 persons, and local interests were dismayed to be by-passed by Locke's scheme. They argued that a line could be made running north from Kendal up Long Sleddale. At the head of the valley a mile tunnel could take the line to a viaduct over Mardale, and the line would then follow the west side of HaweswaterThe body of water was much altered after 1929 when it was made into Haweswater Reservoir. to Bampton and Penrith. The tunnel under Gatescarth Pass (1,950 feet above sea level) would require construction shafts 700 feet deep. Meanwhile Locke revisited his Lune Valley route and proposed a deviation between Tebay and Penrith, involving a shorter tunnel under Orton Scar, before curving to the west through Crosby Ravensworth, Morland and Clifton.
The Commission on Railway Communication
Carlisle was not the ultimate destination in these considerations: the issue was a route between the emerging English network and central Scotland. Although Lancaster was an obvious starting point for a westerly route, there were advocates for an eastern route from York. Here too the terrain northwards was a major difficulty: selection of the route of such a line within Scotland was just as controversial as that in England, and it incorporated just as great a difficulty in finding a practicable route.
At the time there was a firm belief that only one such route could be sustained, and the Government took the unusual step of establishing a Commission on Railway Communication to determine what that route should be. The commission was appointed in November 1839 and had two members, Lt Col Sir Frederic Smith and Peter Barlow, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Their task was to examine the whole question of railway communication between England and Scotland, as well as between London and Ireland.
The Smith and Barlow Commission became bogged down by energetic advocacy of rival schemes, and their first report of May 1840 was ambiguous. However it rejected the Stephenson scheme for a Cumberland coast railway. They suggested that a route combining the Lancaster to Kendal part of the Long Sleddale route and the northern part of the Lune Valley route might be feasible. George Larmer, working as Locke's local engineering representative while Locke was engaged elsewhere, quickly surveyed the connecting link from near Kendal to Borrowbridge in the Lune Valley, finding a route that offered reasonable gradients.
The commission issued a second report in November 1840, which approved Larmer's route, which became the preferred option for a Lancaster to Carlisle line. The commission stuck to the policy that only one Anglo-Scottish route was viable, but it refrained from any definite recommendation as between west and east coasts. Their opinion was becoming irrelevant, as the west coast faction was now building to Lancaster, and the east coast railways were shortly to reach Newcastle.
Final route selection
At the time a London to Glasgow journey involved a steamer section, at first from Liverpool to Ardrossan, and from 1840 from Fleetwood to Ardrossan. Provision of a direct railway connection was now inevitable and the commission's view was no longer authoritative. However the money market had become tight, but after considerable hesitation in committing money, there was a meeting on 6 November 1843 at Kendal which determined to build what became the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway Company. The London and Birmingham Railway had offered to subscribe £100,000, the Grand Junction Railway had offered £250,000 and the North Union Railway and the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway had each agreed to take £65,000. Locke was asked to be engineer-in-chief and he made some last minute revisions to the route previously advanced. The line was to strike north from the Lancaster-Penny Street terminus of the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway and pass round the east side of the town.Lancaster became a city in 1937. Locke adopted the Lancaster - Oxenholme - Grayrigg - Tebay route, but eliminated the tunnel at Orton Scar, and determined to cross Shap Summit without any tunnel. In doing so he increased ruling gradients from 1 in 140 in the earlier scheme to four miles of 1 in 75. To avoid landowner opposition, he altered the Bampton and Askham route to run via Thrimby Grange and Clifton. The bill for the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway went forward to the 1844 session of Parliament.
Authorisation and construction
The scheme received royal assent without much opposition, becoming the (7 & 8 Vict. c. xxxvi) on 6 June 1844. Authorised share capital was £900,000.
The line was to be built as a single track with land acquired sufficient for double track. However on 4 October 1844 the directors resolved: "That viewing probable increase of traffic and the extension of the railway to Scotland... it is desirable that this board shall recommend to the shareholders at a special meeting to be held as early as possible, to lay down a double line of rails for the whole line or for any part that may be considered desirable." This was obviously in consideration of a continuation to central Scotland, although it was nine months before the Caledonian Railway act of incorporation, the Caledonian Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. clxii), of 31 July 1845.
In early 1845 a petition was received from citizens of Lancaster, asking that the new line should pass to the west of the town, near the navigable section of the River Lune. This was agreed to, and an amending act of Parliament, the Kendal and Windermere Railway Act 1845 (8 & 9 Vict. c. xxxii), obtained on 30 June 1845 authorising a deviation line leaving the Lancaster and Preston Junction Railway (L&PJR) south of Lancaster, and passing through a new Lancaster station; the old station was thus to remain a terminus. Kendal interests were also dismayed to learn that the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&CR) would pass about two miles from their town, and they quickly developed a scheme for a branch line to their town, running on to the shore of Windermere. Approval for the Kendal and Windermere Railway was received in the same act of Parliament as the Lancaster deviation, without opposition in Parliament; authorised capital was £125,000.
Construction and opening The allied railways building the east coast route to Scotland, via Berwick,Later named Berwick-upon-Tweed. were pressing ahead, and there was serious concern that if the was not built swiftly, it would suffer a huge competitive disadvantage.
The line was opened between Lancaster and Kendal Junction (later named Oxenholme) was opened formally on 21 September 1846, and the following day to the general public. For the time being it was a single line only. The section from Kendal Junction to Kendal on the Windermere line was opened on the same day. On 15 December 1846 the remainder of the line from Kendal Junction to Carlisle was opened formally, and fully on 17 December 1846. By January 1847 double track had been installed throughout. Two passenger trains ran each way daily throughout on the line at first.
The Caledonian Railway opened its line from Carlisle northwards to Beattock on 11 September 1847, the first stage of its own construction.
Windermere branch The first branch connection of any sort off the L&CR was the Kendal and Windermere Railway. The two miles from Kendal Junction (later named Oxenholme) to Kendal opened to passenger traffic with the southern section of the L&CR on 22 September 1846, but goods traffic was delayed until 4 January 1847. The Kendal to Windermere section was opened on 20 April 1847.
Company amalgamations