The Ticknall Tramway was a long gauge horse-drawn

plateway A plateway is an early kind of railway, tramway or wagonway, where the rails are made from cast iron. They were mainly used for about 50 years up to 1830, though some continued later. Plateways consisted of "L"-shaped rails, where the flange o ...

terminating at

Ticknall Ticknall is a small village and civil parish in South Derbyshire, England. The population of the civil parish (including Calke) at the 2011 Census was 642. Situated on the A514 road, close to Melbourne, it has three pubs, several small businesse ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It operated from 1802 to 1913.

Location

The

industrial tramway Tramways are lightly laid railways, sometimes with the wagons or carriages moved without locomotives. Because individual tramway infrastructure is not intended to carry the weight of typical standard-gauge railway equipment, the tramways over w ...

connected the brickyards, lime quarries and lime yards of Ticknall to the

Ashby Canal The Ashby-de-la-Zouch Canal is a long canal in England which connected the mining district around Moira, just outside the town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, with the Coventry Canal at Bedworth in Warwickshire. It was opened in 1804, ...

. It had branches to the quarries and lime works at Cloud Hill and to the Smoile and Lount collieries.

History

The construction and use of the tramway was permitted by an

Act of Parliament Acts of Parliament, sometimes referred to as primary legislation, are texts of law passed by the Legislature, legislative body of a jurisdiction (often a parliament or council). In most countries with a parliamentary system of government, acts of ...

of 25 May 1794. Ashby Canal Company decided on 21 August 1798, to contract

Benjamin Outram Benjamin Outram (1 April 1764 – 22 May 1805) was an English civil engineer, surveyor and industrialist. He was a pioneer in the building of canals and tramways. Life Born at Alfreton in Derbyshire, he began his career assisting his father ...

, one of the founders of the

Butterley Company The Butterley Company was an English manufacturing firm founded as Benjamin Outram and Company in 1790. Its subsidiaries existed until 2009. Origins This area of Derbyshire had been known for its outcrops of iron ore which had been exploited ...

regarding the benefits of using a tramway instead of a canal. The company approved his recommendations in December 1798 and issued some notes regarding the route. In December 1799 the company concluded that it could not finance a double-track line, and built just a single-track line from Old Parks Tunnel to Ticknall but a double-track from Willesley to Old Parks. Due to the lack of liquidity, Outram threatened the company in February 1801 to stop all work if he was not paid. The company complained about Outram's workmanship and contracted

Joseph Wilkes Joseph Wilkes (1733–1805) was an 18th-century English industrialist and agricultural improver born in the village of Overseal in Derbyshire but more commonly associated with the village of Measham in Leicestershire. From a farming family, Wil ...

Measham Measham is a large village in the North West Leicestershire district in Leicestershire, England, near the Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire boundaries. It lies off the A42, 4½ miles (7.25 km) south of Ashby de la Zouch, in the Natio ...

and other inspectors, to assess the line in 1802 and 1803. Their reports show the length of the completed sections as follows. The tramway was informally taken into use between July and October 1802. It was last used on 1913 and officially closed in 1915. The tramway is recognised as "well ahead of its time" and "a milestone in transport technology and a model for the modern railway systems which followed thirty years later."''Ticknall Tramway.''
auf www.transporttrust.com

Tracks

The L-shaped cast iron rails were cast in Benjamin Outram's foundry of the Butterly Iron works, keeping them fully occupied for 15 months. The rails had each a length of and an average weight of were mounted onto

setts A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip tha ...

(stone sleeper blocks) with a minimum weight of . Waggons with flangeless wheels were hauled by horses. The horizontal running track of the rails was wide, and the curved upright flange was high in the centre and at the ends. The track was called “Outram Way”.The “Outram Way.”
In
Locomotive Firemen's Magazine (1901).
/ref> The gauge of was wider than that of Outram's earlier tramways, as he believed that this would offer additional capacity for the transporting of goods. The Outram Way - Constructed by Benjamin Outram at Ticknall, England, and opened for traffic, with horse power, in 1799, and utilized in January, 1901, nearly 102 years later.jpg, Switch of the “Outram Way”Clement Edwin Stretton
''The history of the Midland Railway.''
Methuen & Co., 1901. Stone-crushing machine at Blackwater Pit in Ticknall.jpg, Blackwater Pit Bridge of Tramway over Railway at Woodlands Wharf, Ashby Woulds.jpg, Tramway bridge at Woodlands Wharf

Bridges and tunnels

Some of the embankments and cuts cans still be seen, as well as a bridge (''The Arch'') over the Main Street in Ticknall, which is still being used by farmers. It looks similar to canal bridges, is Grade II listed, as it is one of the oldest railway bridges in the world. Two

cut and cover A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A Pipeline transport, pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used ...

tunnels are well preserved in Calke Park. The longer tunnel is an underpass of the main drive to Calke Abbey, the hall of the Harpur family, which is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

. Stone sleeper blocks can still be seen at various points along the route. Ticknall Tramway Arch - geograph.org.uk - 5860678.jpg, “The Arch” over Main Street in Ticknall Tramway Tunnel, Calke Park - geograph.org.uk - 277880.jpg, Southwestern mouth of the

Calke Abbey Calke Abbey is a Grade I listed country house near Ticknall, Derbyshire, England, in the care of the charitable National Trust. The site was an Augustinian priory from the 12th century until its dissolution by Henry VIII. The present building, n ...

Tunnel File:Ticknall Tramway tunnel (geograph 5860665).jpg, Eastern mouth of the Calke Abbey Tunnel

Operation

Benjamin Outram planned to use two horses to haul a train in the flat area, and support these by a third horse on the uphill section from Ticknall to the top of Pistern Hill. The support horse was to be led back by a boy four times a day, to support the uphill run of other trains. Consequently, four men, one boy and nine horses were required to transport 40 tons of stones from Ticknall to the Ashby Canal, and on the return runs 12 tons coal, slack (coal dust) and other goods.

Literature

*Gerry Calderbank: ''Canal, Coal & Tramway: An Introduction to the Industrial Heritage of Mamble.'' L C Promotions, 2000. *Geoffrey Holt: ''The Ticknall Tramway.'' Ticknall Preservation and Historical Society, 2002. *I. Stabb und T. Downing: ''The Redlake Tramway and the China Clay Industry.'' T. Downing, 1977. *John Stanley Webb: ''Black Country Tramways: Company-worked Tramways and Light Railways of the West Midlands Industrial Area: 1913–39.'' J. S. Webb, 1976,

External links

* John Hudson
''The Ticknall to Ashby tramway, Derbyshire, UK.''
YouTube video, 25 May 2018.
Early plateway on the Ticknall Tramway, Derbyshire

References

{{coord, 52.81015, -1.47304, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Plateway Industrial railways in England Tram transport 4 ft 2 in gauge railways in England Former buildings and structures in England Rail transport in Derbyshire Horse-drawn railways