The Lee Moor Tramway: a pictorial record
£15.49
Recommended retail price: £16.00
Stock type: -
Stock reference: 26.001
£15.49
Recommended retail price: £16.00
Stock type: -
Stock reference: 26.001
This amazing freight only railway had horse drawn sections, cable-hauled inclines, a steam worked section and offered the spectacle of a horse towing a string of wagons across the GWR main line where the two lines intersected.
The Lee Moor Tramway was built in 1859 to the unusual gauge of 4 feet 6 inches as a branch off of the Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway. It crossed the Great Western Railway's west of England main line at Laira where, being the older route, its horse drawn trains had precedence over GWR expresses. This was still happening as late as 1960 when the line was increasingly an anachronism.
Both of the small steam locomotives introduced in 1899, to work the section between the inclines, have been restored and preserved, one at the National Trust's Saltram House and the other at the Wheal Martyn China Clay Museum in Cornwall.
The book brings together a remarkable collection of over 140 photographs, most never published before, illustrating the many facets of this idiosyncratic railway. It makes a very worthwhile contribution to the social, industrial and transport history of this corner of Devon.
R E Taylor.
Casebound
96 pages. 148 illustrations.
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Minor & Industrial Railways
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