Background, limestone and coal
Coal deposits had been worked in the area close to the Fife coast for centuries. Coal had been important in the manufacture of lime, and of salt, both of which required huge quantities of coal.Bruce Lenman, ''An Economic History of Modern Scotland, 1660 - 1976'', B T Batsford Ltd, London, 1977, Transport of heavy minerals before the era when roads had been properly made was expensive, and most minerals were carried on the backs of pack horses. The expense of even a short transit hugely increased the cost of the product. Proximity to water enabled boat transportation, and therefore mineral deposits close to the Firth were favoured, and were exploited first. Coal outcrops were worked since the fourteenth century, in shallow pits but as these were worked out, the workings had to move further away from water and transport became more difficult. In the eighteenth century much of the limestone from the area around Dunfermline was exported through Brucehaven, near Limekilns, but as the agricultural revolution gathered pace the demand for lime to improve land also accelerated.Duncan McNaughton, ''The Elgin or Charlestown Railway'', privately published, Dunfermline, 1986, Before the era of theThe Fordell Railway
The Fordell Railway had an unbroken operational existence of 180 years. It ran to St David's Harbour, about a mile east of Inverkeithing, from pits and quarries north of the harbour, and it was eventually extended northwards nearly to Cowdenbeath.J C Inglis and F Inglis, ''The Fordell Railway'', The Munro Press Ltd, Perth, 1946 The Henderson family had owned extensive lands in the area since time immemorial, and coal had been worked since the sixteenth century. It was dug from outcrops at the surface, and was taken away by boat. As the outcrops became exhausted, overlying strata further from the coast had to be worked, and transport of the mineral to market was a significant challenge. The coal was carried in panniers on pack horses to a gathering point near Fordell Castle, and there by a coal road to Inverkeithing Harbour. In 1752 Sir Robert Henderson, the fourth baronet, acquired lands on the Firth of Forth about a mile east of Inverkeithing, and he constructed a harbour there. It became known as St David's harbour. Salt pans were established there and the coal road was extended to St David's. Vessels up to 600 tons could berth there. About 1770 Henderson had a wooden waggonway built to connect the pits and quarries to the harbour. It was four miles in extent. The waggonway followed the design principles of the Tyneside waggonways.John Thomas and David Turnock, ''A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 15, North of Scotland'', David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1989, The track gauge was 4 ft 4inBertram Baxter, ''Stone Blocks and Iron Rails'', David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1966 and the gradients were steep: as much as 1 in 13 near Vantage. The wooden permanent way was laid with two timber beams making a rail, fir underneath and beech above; wood sleepers were at two-feet intervals. The rails were 10 to 11 feet in length, secured to each other and the sleepers by oak pins. The line was a single line throughout.This form of construction was often referred to as "the double road", referring to the two layers of timber, not the modern connotation of double track. John Henderson succeeded to the baronetcy on 19 October 1781 and he continued to improve the coal workings, constructing a prodigious drainage channel to drain the workings. He purchased the mineral rights to lands at Cuttlehill, further north in 1798, and extended the waggonway to pits there. In 1798 the cost of construction was thought to be £450 per mile, and the maintenance cost £560 for the entire 4.25 miles annually. The 48 cwt waggons required two horses to draw them. In December 1817 Henderson died and his daughter Anne Isabella inherited the estate, and in time she became the second wife of Sir Philip Calderwood Durham. From 1823 coal was exploited from Prathouse by the Halbeath Company, which had its own railway network. However they were unable to connect their new pit to their own network, so they leased the pit to Sir Philip Durham and the Fordell system was extended to reach it, from West Moss pits. The line was opened in 1841 - 1842. St David's Harbour was progressively improved in the nineteenth century as volumes of coal handled increased. It was deepened in 1826 and again in 1832 together with an extension to the pier. In 1844 an improved siding layout was installed, together with coal hoists. In March 1832 the mine manager, William L Gofton, submitted a plan for upgrading the line, which was agreed upon. A new pit called Lady Anne was sunk south of Cuttlehill in 1833 and the upgrading of the line started at the same time. There was a short tunnel under the Crossgates – Donibristle road. There were to be two inclined planes; one at Colton (332 yards with a gradient of 1 in 24) and one at Fordell House, known as the Vantage incline. Vantage was 1148 yards long with a gradient of 1 in 23.75. At Hillend an extra horse was stationed to assist waggons up the incline. The inclined planes used a large wheel round which the rope (later a wire rope) passed and there was a brake on the drum enabling a man to control the speed of the movement; it was worked on the balanced system: four loaded waggons descended and hauled four empties up. The upper part of the inclined plane had three rails and the lower half was single track, with a passing loop at the mid point. Robert Hawthorn of Newcastle was asked to comment on the technical changes, and he proposed a further tunnel at Hillend bridge, under the Inverkeithing road, and a third inclined plane near St David's ending near the south pier. It was 480 yards long on a gradient of 1 in 28. The gauge of the new iron railway line was the same as the wooden railway and it was 4.6 miles in length, falling continuously from Lady Anne pit 440 feet above the track on the pier at St David's. The rails were 28 lbs per yard fish-bellied, procured from the Bedlington Iron Company. They were held in 9 lb iron chairs secure to whinstone block sleepers by two iron pegs. The joint sleeper blocks were double width and there were no fishplates. Between the inclines trains of four waggons were pulled by two horses. The cost of operation was thought to be about one-third of that with the wooden track system, and 50,000 tons were carried annually, considered to be double the maximum possible on the old track. The pit known as Wellington, renamed William in 1843, was also operating from 1843; coal was brought down from it to Lady Anne by a separate self-acting inclined plane. In 1847 no. 9 Pit was sunk, near to Lady Anne. Light parallel iron rails were used in the short branch connection. In 1850 the George Pit was sunk on the north of Cuttlehill; a standard gauge waggonway was built to connect to the nearby Edinburgh, Perth and Dundee Railway. Up until this time all the output of the collieries (except a small amount of land sale) went for coastal and export shipping through St David's. However as the railway extended northwards, it now came close to theElgin Railway
The Elgin Railway ran from several collieries and quarries north and north-west of Dunfermline to Charlestown harbour, west of Queensferry.Many contemporary accounts spell the place ''Charleston''. Charles, the fifth Earl of Elgin owned collieries to the north and north-west of Dunfermline, and two harbours on the Forth: Charlestown and Limekilns. Both of these had limestone quarries nearby, and impressive arrays of lime kilns. Bruce extended limestone quarries near Broomhall, and built new kilns, before 1760. He constructed a harbour which he called Charlestown in 1761, and the works included a village with cottages for workers and ships' crews waiting for a tide. Lime burning required large quantities of coal, but nothing suitable was available on the Broomhall estate, and Elgin was dependent on supplies from workings at Pitfirrane and Urquhart. The road transit was difficult, and he attempted to interest his neighbouring landowners, Sir John Wedderburn of Gosforth, now of Pitfirrane, and Robert Wellwood of Garvock and Pitliver, in improving transport facilities; in 1762 he was corresponding with them over a possible waggonway, but little was done. Lord Elgin gradually acquired land to the foot of the Pittencrieff Coal Road with a view to construction of a waggonway. In 1765 George Chalmers of Edinburgh tried to persuade the Earl to grant a wayleave for a waggonway to replace the road transport. He had been to great trouble to discover the best Newcastle method, and wrote: "I suppose we can have people from Bo'ness or Carron who can make the waggons of a proper size and probably one which will hold 2½ tons of coals may be sufficient for about 3 tons of limestone." He said he would consult William Brown of Throckley. In 1769 Chalmers wrote to Ralph Carr of Newcastle saying that a five-mile waggonway over rough terrain had been surveyed but that he wanted Mr Brown's advice. Chalmers' ambitions were partly realised when a short line was built at Limekilns to serve the kilns themselves, and a wooden waggonway was built from limestone quarries and coal pits at Berrylaw (west of Dunfermline) to the coast at Limekilns. Some time between 1765 and 1780 a small network of lines to Charlestown was built, with an incline on a gradient of 1 in 6.7 on the final approach to Charlestown.The railway on Lord Elgin's works, between Dunfermline and Limekilns in Fife, for design and execution, is inferior to none. On this line of railway there are two inclined planes, executed with all the requisite machinery, for the loaded waggons drawing up the empty ones; the longest of these is about 511 yards, with a declivity of about one in twenty. Between the two inclined planes, the ground had been originally nearly level to some extent: an ingenious advantage is taken of this level, by commencing, at a short distance from the foot of the upper inclined plane, and cutting out a track for a railway, with an easy slope in the line of the main descending railway for the loaded waggons, by banking up the earth, and facing it with a stone-wall; another railway is formed with a similar slope, but in a contrary direction, towards the foot of the upper inclined plane. In this manner the two railways are carried forward until they reach the top or bank-head of the under inclined plane, where the difference of perpendicular height between the two appears to be about 10 feet; the one-half of this height gives a declivity to the loaded waggons to proceed downwards; and the other half a declivity to the empty waggons, to proceed to the foot of the upper inclined plane: the brake or drag of the loaded waggons has only to be attended to, for regulating their motion to the place where they start on the inclined plane.
By forming the two railways upon the original level line, in the manner above described, the bank-head of the empty waggons is several yards from the bank-head where the loaded waggons start: this distance is got the better of, by means of an additional piece of rope or chain, that is hooked off and on, as occasion requires. The breadth of each set of tracks on this line is 4 feet 3 inches;The track gauge was 4ft 0in. Lewis points out that Scott is referring to a back-to-back dimension; original drawings of 1821 - 1823 show the gauge as 4ft. the weight of each of the waggons, when loaded, is between 2 and 3 tons. From 100 to 200 tons of coal pass down this line daily.Alexander Scott: Mr. Scott's Account of Railways, in ''Prize-Essays and Transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland, volume vi'', Edinburgh, 1824The railway was later realigned; improvements may have been made by 1821 by the engineer Landale. Further improvements were made in the Coalbridge area in the 1830s to improve sharp curves, and there was a realignment at Merryhill in 1851 to meet the requirements of the Turnpike Trust. There was also a branch to Nethertown in Dunfermline, opened in 1833, and it was used for general freight traffic and passengers. This changed its nature from a purely mineral line and it became known, informally at first, as the Dunfermline and Charlestown Railway. The passengers were conveyed from 31 October 1833 from a "depot" at the foot of the Nethertown incline to Charlestown. A surprising number of the passengers travelled to Charlestown for the purpose of sea-bathing, which had become a popular craze. The extension to Nethertown itself was opened on 10 March 1834; this "Nethertown" was a little north of the 1812 branch terminus. Quick explains the first passenger operations:
Dunfermline was provided with a link to the Forth steamers. Towards the end of 1833 a service was advertised from the junction of the coal road to Charlestown, just short of the harbour. From 1834 it ran from the Dunfermline station at Netherton (sic). Returns to the Board of Trade for the first half of 1842 say that the service ran twice daily in winter, four times in summer, with no intermediate stoppages. All services were horse-drawn until 1853, when steam was introduced for minerals. In June 1853 the line was inspected with a view to attaching passenger carriages to steam-drawn mineral trains, but the permission was refused. The service ceased at the end of September 1863. (North British Railway minutes of 21 August said that the Company would be discontinuing the arrangement on and after 1 October following.)Quick states that the passenger service ended in September 1863.M E Quick, ''Railway Passenger Stations in England Scotland and Wales—A Chronology'', The Railway and Canal Historical Society, 2002 Chalmers described the situation on Lord Elgin's railway:
His Lordship's coal is conveyed to his limeworks and shipping at Charleston (sic) by a railroad, the two inclined planes of which, near the town of Dunfermline, are much admired, and were executed, on a change of the line of the rail-road in 1821, at very great expense, under the direction of the late ingenious Mr Landale of Dundee. The Wellwood coal for exportation is now also conveyed along this railway, which is connected with that colliery by a branch line... The railway is about six miles in length, but longer when the branches to the different pits, &c, are taken into account. There are from 100 to 500 tons of coal generally carried along it in a day, according to the demand, or the number of vessels lying in the Charleston harbour waiting for them.Rev Peter Chalmers, ''Historical and Statistical account of Dunfermline'', William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1844In October 1849 the main line of the Elgin Railway was converted to standard gauge. As the changeover took a few days during which the line was closed, and an early railway replacement bus service was operated in substitution for the passenger trains, operated by John Croall and Co of Edinburgh. About 1850 a connection was made at Colton to the standard gauge line of the Stirling and Dunfermline Railway. Steam traction was adopted on the Elgin line. In 1852 Chalmers published a second volume, in which he described the adoption of steam engines:
Steam was for the first time introduced on the Railway to Charleston in February 1852, whereby that seaport is brought within 10 or 12 minutes of Dunfermline. There is one large railway carriage, able to accommodate about 50 passengers... There are two inclines on the railroad near to the town of Dunfermline and a third at the shore. The coals are conveyed by a locomotive engine from the pits to the top of the first incline at the Colton station, ear theeast end of Golf Drum Street, and from the bottom of it they are drawn a short distance by horses, to the top of the second incline, which commences a little south of Pittencrieff toll-bar, and are afterwards conveyed by another locomotive, which takes also goods and passengers from the Netherton (sic) station in the town of Dunfermline to the steamboats that ply between Stirling and Granton ear Edinburghpier.Quoted in Dendy Marshall; it has not proved possible to trace Chalmers' 1852 work.C F Dendy Marshall, ''A History of British Railways Down to the Year 1830'', Oxford University Press, 1938, reprint 1971, 0 19 828254 0By 1861 much of the network was purchased by the West of Fife Mineral Railway (below) and the remainder, the central section through Dunfermline, was abandoned in 1866.
Halbeath Railway
The Halbeath Railway ran from Sampson Lloyd's collieries near Crossgates and Dunfermline to the Forth at Inverkeithing where coal was exported, and also used in salt pans. A line of five miles in length was opened in 1783, using wooden track. In due course connections were made to other industries, including limestone quarries at Sunnybank, freestone quarries at Bonnyside and Rosebank and distilling at Borland. The construction costs had been estimated at £750 per mile including the waggons. There were passing places on the single track at intervals of 550 yards. Traffic developed sufficiently to justify improvement of track with iron capping of the wooden rails by 1798. Iron edge rails were installed in 1811. The track gauge was 4 ft 4in. In 1841 a branch opened from Guttergates to Townhill collieries. (below) In the 1846 Parliamentary session the Bill for the Edinburgh and Perth Direct Railway was rejected. The North British Railway had hoped to expand northwards by an alliance with this company, and the NBR Board had decided to commit up to £25,000 to the purchase of the Halbeath Railway, as it was anticipated that the route of the Halbeath would be used for a future main line north. £10,000 was put down as a deposit. This caused an uproar at a shareholders' meeting as the Board was already under fire for committing the company's money to speculative schemes, and the shares in the Halbeath line that had been purchased were subsequently sold. When theTownhill waggonway
The town of Dunfermline owned the Townhill colliery, but found it difficult and expensive to transport its output to harbours on the Forth. After a long period during which road transport was used, a waggonway to join the Halbeath line at Guttergates was built; it opened in September 1841 from North Engine (Townhill No 1 Pit) with a short branch to Humbug. There was a fall of 100 feet to the junction with the Halbeath line, but an initial section of the route rose (against the load) to Bellyeoman before falling at 1 in 32.Venturefair waggonway
There was a pit called Venturefair near the Town Loch: writing in 1879 Ebenezer Henderson said:Early in the year 1812, Mr Syme completed a railway between his colliery at Venture-Fair ... and Knabbie Street, where his town coal depot was situated. This coal depot which was situated about the middle of Knabbie Street, north side, at the back of the houses, has been disused for about fifty years.Ebenezer Henderson, ''The Annals of Dunfermline and Vicinity: From the Earliest Authentic Period to the Present Time, A.D. 1069-1878'', Dunfermline, 1879, quoted in ''Brotchie''The line was a little over a mile long, and included a viaduct of four arches 30 feet high. The track was probably cast iron rails on stone sleepers.
Townhill branch extension
The Townhill branch was extended to connect with the Elgin system about the year 1856, and also to reach Wellwood colliery, which had lost its link with Charlestown by this time. Traffic on the Townhill line and its various connections then became dominant and the line to Halbeath had closed by 1850. In the end all the traffic from the Townhill area was routed to the NBR at Charlestown by the Elgin Railway and the link with Inverkeithing closed by 1867.Main line railways
In 1830 theThe Dunfermline and Charlestown Railway
The Dunfermline branch was added to the Elgin system in 1834, before the arrival of the two main line railways. Passengers and general goods were conveyed from Dunfermline to Charlestown Harbour, which became an important ferry port for transport to Edinburgh. This changed the character of the Elgin Railway network from a simple mineral line to a general railway, and the route soon became known informally as the Dunfermline and Charlestown Railway. The entire network was 6 miles long between Wellwood, Baldridge and Charlestown Harbour. In the 1850s a line was added running eastwards across the north side of Dunfermline to join up with the Halbeath Railway system, giving access to the Halbeath collieries.John Thomas, ''The North British Railway, volume 1'', David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1969,Charlestown Railway and Harbour Company
The Charlestown Railway and Harbour Company was incorporated on 8 August 1859, with capital of £72,000. The Act empowered the new company to take over some of the network of the Elgin Railway, between Charlestown and a junction with the West of Fife Mineral Railway at Dunfermline (Townhill Junction), and to improve the harbour at Charlestown. Authorised capital was £72,000.E F Carter, ''An Historical Geography of the Railways of the British Isles'', Cassell, London, 1959 The Elgin lines that became part of the Charlestown Railway were already working co-operatively with the new West of Fife Mineral Railway (below), and the co-operation continued.West of Fife Mineral Railway
As theThe West of Fife Railway Company have just completed an arrangement, about which there has been of late considerable negotiation, whereby they acquire, at a cost we believe of £62,000, the Charlestown Railway from the Right Hon. the Earl of Elgin. The Charlestown Railway embraces the line from Dunfermline to Charlestown Harbour... There will, we understand, be considerable alterations effected by the new proprietors on the gradients of the Charlestown line, so as to make the railway more available than hitherto for passengers as well as for mineral traffic.Dundee, Perth, and Cupar Advertiser, Tuesday 25 September 1860On 1 August 1861 the West of Fife company merged with the Charlestown Railway and Harbour Company, and also the Elgin Railways, to form the West of Fife Railway and Harbour Company. Formal absorption was discussed in October 1858 and was formalised from 1 October 1861.
West of Fife Railway and Harbour Company
The West of Fife Railway and Harbour Company started its existence in a satisfactory financial position; at a shareholders' meeting on 13 September 1861 a 5% dividend was announced for Charlestown shareholders and 4% to West of Fife shareholders.Dunfermline Saturday Press, Saturday 14 September 1861 However since 1858 the West of Fife company had feared an incursion by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, which had proposed a line from North Queensferry; if successful, such a line would seriously reduce the profitability of the West of Fife company, and consideration was given to a merger with the North British Railway.In North British Railway hands
Accordingly, the independent existence of the new company did not endure long: by Act of 29 July 1862 the West of Fife Railway and Harbour Company was vested in the North British Railway. The former Elgin railway system declined rapidly in importance after the NBR takeover, when the company wished to make direct connection with its own standard gauge wagons, and parts of the network soon closed. On 27 October 1862 a new locomotive-worked incline down to the harbour at Charlestown was opened, replacing the rope worked incline. Improvement works were also carried out at the harbour itself. The new line was a single-track deviation at a gradient of 1 in 50, leaving the old line at Broadhills. The old line closed on 25 October 1862: at this time the passenger service was in operation and the new deviation had not been inspected by the Board of Trade inspector for approval for passenger operation, so a temporary station was built at Merryhill, the lowest point on the original line. Passengers had to walk the last half mile to Charlestown, and passenger usage immediately declined substantially. The passenger service ceased from 30 September 1863. Getting access to Charlestown from the main line railway network involved the use of the exchange sidings at Colton, west of Dunfermline. However the former Elgin line running south from there to Charlestown used the Pittencrieff incline, which was still rope-worked. The North British Railway Act of 1863 authorised a new line by-passing it. The new line left the Nethertown line at Liggar's Bridge (at a junction called Elbowend Junction) and continued eastwards, passing round the south and then northwards past the east side of Dunfermline, turning east again to join the Dunfermline to Cowdenbeath line at Townhill Junction. This new line opened during the first half of 1865. The Pittencrieff incline continued in use nonetheless, serving Baldridge Pit, until 1875. The new line was the basis of the later Dunfermline and Queensferry Railway approach to Dunfermline, but at this stage it was a mineral railway only. The West of Fife line had been engineered by Thomas Bouch, who had made a name for himself building low-cost railways, avoiding expensive and—he argued—unnecessary engineering features. From 1875 the North British Railway found it necessary to regrade and reconstruct much of the original sections of the West of Fife line. On 1 June 1880 the NBR opened a connection from Lilliehill Junction to Townhill Junction, providing a more convenient connection to the West of Fife mineral lines. The Dunfermline and Queensferry Railway had long been proposed, and it was finally opened on 2 November 1877, leaving the Charlestown line at Charlestown Junction. It had been conceived as an alternative route for ferry passengers crossing the Forth at Queensferry. It was promoted independently, and the North British Railway had promised financial support, but as it became increasingly likely that a Forth Bridge would soon be built, the NBR lost interest, and the little company had to fall back on its own resources. It used a Comely Park passenger station in Dunfermline (later renamed Dunfermline Lower in 1890) and Townhill Junction at Dunfermline faced eastwards. Until 1890 there was noClosure
The passenger service to Charlestown was withdrawn at the beginning of November 1926, possibly 1 November 1926, although Crombie depot continued to receive a considerable goods traffic, up to twenty wagons daily. The Kincardine line passenger service was withdrawn from 7 July 1930. Braeside Halt had closed on 1 August 1926.Gordon Stansfield, ''Fife's Lost Railways'', Stenlake Publishing, Catrine, 1998, By the end ofNotes
References
{{reflist, 30em Closed railway lines in Scotland Railway lines in Scotland Early Scottish railway companies Standard gauge railways in Scotland North British Railway Horse-drawn railways Dunfermline History of Fife Transport in Fife