Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway
Encyclopedia
The Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway was a narrow gauge railway in Kintyre
, Scotland, between the towns of Campbeltown
and Machrihanish
. Only three other passenger-carrying lines in the UK operated on the same gauge, all of them in Wales - the Corris Railway
, the short-lived Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway
and the Talyllyn Railway
.
peninsula since 1498 or before. Although not of the highest quality, the coal found there is abundant and relatively cheap to extract. In the middle of the eighteenth century the collieries
of the area were kept busy supplying the many whisky
distilleries in the Campbeltown area. In 1773 James Watt
surveyed a canal to connect the coal mines to Campbeltown to reduce the costs of transportation. The 3 miles (4.8 km) Campbeltown and Machrihanish Canal was opened in 1794.
This early transportation link fell into disuse and had been virtually abandoned by 1856. In 1875 the Argyll Coal and Canal Co. acquired the main colliery and found the canal in a state of disrepair. They decided a better transportation system was required and began to investigate the building of a railway to Campbeltown.
was built connecting Kilkivan Pit to Campbeltown, a distance of 4+1/2 mi. For a short length the line ran on the formation of the canal before reaching Campbeltown, where it ended on a pier.
The colliery railway only ever carried coal traffic and used two locomotives, Princess and Chevalier to haul the trains of mine tubs.
to build a railway connecting Campbeltown with Machrihanish, on the west coast of the peninsula.
Construction of the Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway began in November 1905. The majority of the route of the new railway followed the colliery tramway, but with several of the steeper gradients and sharper curves eased. The colliery line was also extended west to the new terminus at Machrihanish.
The work was completed in 1906 and the railway opened on 18 August 1906. It was an immediate success, attracting 10,000 passengers in its first three weeks of operation and replacing the horse-drawn tourist charabanc traffic in Campbeltown.
In the years leading up to the First World War the railway thrived on a mixture of coal and passenger traffic. After the war, competition from new motor buses began to reduce the railway's profitable tourist trade. By 1931 the summer tourist trade had dwindled significantly. Although passenger trains did run in early 1932, the railway was failing and it abandoned passenger services in May 1932. By November 1933 the railway had been wound up and in May 1934 the last trains ran, assisting in the scrapping of the line.
for a process to produce oil from coal
. This concern was not successful and the line closed to passengers in September 1931 and to all traffic in November 1932.
Macmillan gives a slightly different version:
It seems that there was some concern about the company's conduct and a question was asked about the matter in Parliament on 14 February 1933.
supplied four passenger bogie
carriages for the line in 1906. Each carriage had a central saloon with wooden tramway style seating for 64 passengers and open end platforms. Two further carriages were supplied by Pickering in 1907, the second of which had a central luggage compartment.
The carriages survived the closure of the line and in 1934 were moved to Trench Point on the other side of Campbeltown Loch where they were used as holiday homes. During the Second World War they were used by the Admiralty. After the war they were left to deteriorate until the remaining underframes were finally scrapped in 1958.
There are six saloon coaches on the 15 in (38.1 cm) gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in Cumbria
which are based on the exterior designs of the Campbeltown passenger stock, built in 1989 and 1990 for the Gateshead Garden Festival
.
In addition to the coal wagons, the railway also had a small number of other freight stock, all owned by the railway company itself. A 7 ton brake van was supplied by R.Y. Pickering. The same company supplied an open-sided milk wagon based on the design for the 4½ ton wagon but with open spars extending above the sides to provide extra support for carrying milk churns. Finally the railway had a detachable snow plough and a small platelayer
s' trolley for maintenance work.
Kintyre
Kintyre is a peninsula in western Scotland, in the southwest of Argyll and Bute. The region stretches approximately 30 miles , from the Mull of Kintyre in the south, to East Loch Tarbert in the north...
, Scotland, between the towns of Campbeltown
Campbeltown
Campbeltown is a town and former royal burgh in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. It lies by Campbeltown Loch on the Kintyre peninsula. Originally known as Kinlochkilkerran , it was renamed in the 17th century as Campbell's Town after Archibald Campbell was granted the site in 1667...
and Machrihanish
Machrihanish
Machrihanish is a village in Argyll, Scotland. Machrihanish has a classic links golf course described by many as the defining links course in Scotland.Campbeltown Airport, formerly RAF Machrihanish, is located near the village...
. Only three other passenger-carrying lines in the UK operated on the same gauge, all of them in Wales - the Corris Railway
Corris Railway
The Corris Railway is a narrow gauge preserved railway based in Corris on the border between Merionethshire and Montgomeryshire in Mid-Wales....
, the short-lived Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway
Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway
The Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway was a gauge narrow gauge railway in Cardiganshire in Mid Wales. It ran from Llanfihangel station on the Cambrian Railways via the village of Talybont and the valley of the Afon Leri into the foothills of Plynlimon Fawr...
and the Talyllyn Railway
Talyllyn Railway
The Talyllyn Railway is a narrow-gauge preserved railway in Wales running for from Tywyn on the Mid-Wales coast to Nant Gwernol near the village of Abergynolwyn. The line was opened in 1866 to carry slate from the quarries at Bryn Eglwys to Tywyn, and was the first narrow gauge railway in Britain...
.
Canal
Coal has been mined on the KintyreKintyre
Kintyre is a peninsula in western Scotland, in the southwest of Argyll and Bute. The region stretches approximately 30 miles , from the Mull of Kintyre in the south, to East Loch Tarbert in the north...
peninsula since 1498 or before. Although not of the highest quality, the coal found there is abundant and relatively cheap to extract. In the middle of the eighteenth century the collieries
Coal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
of the area were kept busy supplying the many whisky
Whisky
Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Different grains are used for different varieties, including barley, malted barley, rye, malted rye, wheat, and corn...
distilleries in the Campbeltown area. In 1773 James Watt
James Watt
James Watt, FRS, FRSE was a Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer whose improvements to the Newcomen steam engine were fundamental to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution in both his native Great Britain and the rest of the world.While working as an instrument maker at the...
surveyed a canal to connect the coal mines to Campbeltown to reduce the costs of transportation. The 3 miles (4.8 km) Campbeltown and Machrihanish Canal was opened in 1794.
This early transportation link fell into disuse and had been virtually abandoned by 1856. In 1875 the Argyll Coal and Canal Co. acquired the main colliery and found the canal in a state of disrepair. They decided a better transportation system was required and began to investigate the building of a railway to Campbeltown.
Colliery railway
As rail transport developed in the 19th century, the colliery owners sought to build a tramway to replace the canal. In 1876 a lightly constructed industrial railwayIndustrial railway
An industrial railway is a type of railway that is not available for public transportation and is used exclusively to serve a particular industrial, logistics or military site...
was built connecting Kilkivan Pit to Campbeltown, a distance of 4+1/2 mi. For a short length the line ran on the formation of the canal before reaching Campbeltown, where it ended on a pier.
The colliery railway only ever carried coal traffic and used two locomotives, Princess and Chevalier to haul the trains of mine tubs.
Light railway
The colliery railway's traffic was largely seasonal as most of the colliery output was consumed locally. Around the turn of the century the mine owners began to search for additional traffic for the summer season. At the same time, new steam ships began bringing tourists to the remote Kintyre peninsula. This led to the formation of the Association of Argyll Railway Co. Ltd. which applied for an order under the Light Railways ActLight Railways Act 1896
The Light Railways Act 1896 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland . Before the Act each new railway line built in the country required a specific Act of Parliament to be obtained by the company that wished to construct it, which greatly added to the cost...
to build a railway connecting Campbeltown with Machrihanish, on the west coast of the peninsula.
Construction of the Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway began in November 1905. The majority of the route of the new railway followed the colliery tramway, but with several of the steeper gradients and sharper curves eased. The colliery line was also extended west to the new terminus at Machrihanish.
The work was completed in 1906 and the railway opened on 18 August 1906. It was an immediate success, attracting 10,000 passengers in its first three weeks of operation and replacing the horse-drawn tourist charabanc traffic in Campbeltown.
In the years leading up to the First World War the railway thrived on a mixture of coal and passenger traffic. After the war, competition from new motor buses began to reduce the railway's profitable tourist trade. By 1931 the summer tourist trade had dwindled significantly. Although passenger trains did run in early 1932, the railway was failing and it abandoned passenger services in May 1932. By November 1933 the railway had been wound up and in May 1934 the last trains ran, assisting in the scrapping of the line.
Maisel Oil Company
According to Davies both the railway and the colliery were acquired about 1929 by the Maisel Oil Company, which had a patentPatent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
for a process to produce oil from coal
Coal liquefaction
-Methods:The liquefaction processes are classified as direct conversion to liquids processes and indirect conversion to liquids processeses. Direct processes are carbonization and hydrogenation.-Pyrolysis and carbonization processes:...
. This concern was not successful and the line closed to passengers in September 1931 and to all traffic in November 1932.
Macmillan gives a slightly different version:
"In June (1928) the Franco British Co. acquired the Argyll colliery and at a Campbeltown Town Council meeting on 13th August, Mr. Maisel, a director, said that gas could be got from a proposed coal distillation plant and bought by the town. A report to the shareholders stated that a testing plant of the Aicher low temperature carbonisation process had been in operation for a fortnight, under the supervision of Mr. Aicher. Tests gave yields of between 34½ and 74 gallons of crude oil per ton of coal [154–331 L/t or 37–79 US gal/short ton]. In addition 2350 cubic feet/ton [65.5 m3/t or 2,100 cu ft/short ton] of gas and the residual coke were available from the process. In June 1929 the Franco British Company re-emerged as the Coal Carbonisation Trust and their prospectus mentioned carbonising 1,000 tons [1,016 t or 1120 short tons] of coal per day yielding 11 cwt of coke per ton [550 kg/t]. Almost immediately afterwards the pit at Kilkivan was abandoned and the whole project 'melted like snow aff a dyke'."
It seems that there was some concern about the company's conduct and a question was asked about the matter in Parliament on 14 February 1933.
Locomotives
| Name | Builder | Type | Works Number | Built | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pioneer | 0-4-0 WT |
unknown | 1876 | Delivered for the original colliery railway; never ran on the C&MLR. | |
| Chevalier | Andrew Barclay & Co Andrew Barclay & Sons Co. Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. was a builder of steam and diesel locomotives, based in Kilmarnock, Scotland, that was founded in 1840 and is now owned by Wabtec Rail.- History :... |
0-4-0 ST (converted to 0-4-2 ST) |
269 | 1885 | Rebuilt in 1926 using parts from Princess |
| Princess | Kerr Stuart Kerr Stuart Kerr, Stuart and Company Ltd was a locomotive manufacturer from Stoke-on-Trent, England.-History:It was founded in 1881 by James Kerr as James Kerr & Company, and became Kerr, Stuart & Company from 1883 when John Stuart was taken on as a partner... |
0-4-2 T | 717 | 1900 | Skylark class, scrapped before 1931 |
| Argyll | Andrew Barclay & Co Andrew Barclay & Sons Co. Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. was a builder of steam and diesel locomotives, based in Kilmarnock, Scotland, that was founded in 1840 and is now owned by Wabtec Rail.- History :... |
0-6-2 T | 1049 | 1906 | |
| Atlantic | Andrew Barclay & Co Andrew Barclay & Sons Co. Andrew Barclay Sons & Co. was a builder of steam and diesel locomotives, based in Kilmarnock, Scotland, that was founded in 1840 and is now owned by Wabtec Rail.- History :... |
0-6-2 T | 1098 | 1907 | Identical design to Argyll. |
Passenger stock
R.Y. Pickering & Co. of WishawWishaw
Wishaw is a large town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. It is on the edge of the Clyde Valley, 15 miles south-east of Glasgow....
supplied four passenger bogie
Bogie
A bogie is a wheeled wagon or trolley. In mechanics terms, a bogie is a chassis or framework carrying wheels, attached to a vehicle. It can be fixed in place, as on a cargo truck, mounted on a swivel, as on a railway carriage/car or locomotive, or sprung as in the suspension of a caterpillar...
carriages for the line in 1906. Each carriage had a central saloon with wooden tramway style seating for 64 passengers and open end platforms. Two further carriages were supplied by Pickering in 1907, the second of which had a central luggage compartment.
The carriages survived the closure of the line and in 1934 were moved to Trench Point on the other side of Campbeltown Loch where they were used as holiday homes. During the Second World War they were used by the Admiralty. After the war they were left to deteriorate until the remaining underframes were finally scrapped in 1958.
There are six saloon coaches on the 15 in (38.1 cm) gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway in Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
which are based on the exterior designs of the Campbeltown passenger stock, built in 1989 and 1990 for the Gateshead Garden Festival
Gateshead Garden Festival
The Gateshead Garden Festival was the fourth of the United Kingdom's five National Garden Festivals. Held between May and October 1990, in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, it lasted 157 days, and received over three million visitors. Attractions included public art displays, a Ferris wheel, and dance,...
.
Colliery railway
The colliery railway probably used mine tubs from the collieries' internal lines when it opened in 1876. By 1902, 18 flat four-wheeled wagons were in use, each of which carried four mine "hutches". The hutches were small mine tubs each of which carried 9½ cwt (480 kg) of coal. The hutches were mounted transversely on short lengths of rail on the main railway wagons.Light railway
With the rebuilding of the colliery line in 1906 the opportunity was taken to replace the hutch carrying wagons with more conventional stock. A set of 3¼ ton four-wheel open-sided coal wagons were purchased from Hurst Nelson Ltd. of Motherwell. Like the earlier colliery wagons, these had dumb buffers and centre couplings. Later batches of wagons were built to a 4½ ton design. In all the railway used approximately 150 coal wagons, all owned by the Campbeltown Coal Co. rather than the railway.In addition to the coal wagons, the railway also had a small number of other freight stock, all owned by the railway company itself. A 7 ton brake van was supplied by R.Y. Pickering. The same company supplied an open-sided milk wagon based on the design for the 4½ ton wagon but with open spars extending above the sides to provide extra support for carrying milk churns. Finally the railway had a detachable snow plough and a small platelayer
Platelayer
A platelayer or trackman is a railway employee whose job is to inspect and maintain the permanent way of a railway installation.The term derives from the plates used to build plateways, an early form of railway....
s' trolley for maintenance work.
Sources
- A.D. Farr The Campbeltown & Machrihanish Light Railway, The Oakwood Press, 1967, ISBN 0-85361-351-6
- Nigel S.C. Macmillan The Campbeltown & Machrihanish Light Railway, David & Charles: Newton Abbot, 1970