Cromford and High Peak Railway

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The application of the Locomotive Engine to the purposes of Railway transit has been so successful, and become so universal, as fully to establish its superiority over every other mode Minninglow is somewhere that makes you think and ask questions,’ says Simon Corble, who created this Discovering Britain trail. ‘You can trace patterns of human activity here spanning thousands of years.’ The train is the only moving thing in sight, save when a grouse, wild on the wing, rises with a sharp startled cry. Then just as Buxton is seen, with its white houses lying in the hollow, and shining like a pearl in a setting of emerald, a sudden scream from the engine takes the startled air, and darkness shrouds the feeding train. An official passenger service was operated on the Cromford and High Peak Railway between 1874 and 1877 and during this period there was one train daily throughout the length of the line, in each direction.

This locomotive was built in 1877 for the LNWR and it is seen here hauling a goods train between Sheep Pasture Top and Middleton Bottom. But there is something else to think about besides George Eliot now, oh dreamer. There is the Middleton Incline to go down. The locomotive leaves us; and down below drops the shining tract of steel, its diminishing lines a study of perspective. its powerful aid. We were not at all surprised, therefore, that an attempt was made in the beginning of last year by the enlightened engineer, Mr. Leonard, who has long and successfully superintended the working Some saw them as heroes, others as fools. Either way, trail-blazing railway pioneers had courage in abundance and were rarely thwarted by the undulations of our landscape. Valleys were crossed by embankments or bridges. Hills were cut or tunnelled. And, in between, the permanent way would cling to the contours like a politician to power. So states conventional wisdom. A queue of wagons wait at Sheep Pasture top, before descending the incline. A recent project by English Heritage was to carry out a heritage audit of both the Cromford and High Peak Railway and the Peak Forest Tramway and this took the form of an archaeological survey of each of them.

Repairing the roof at High Peak Junction workshops

The curves are so sharp and frequent that ever and anon the train seems intent on the study of Euclid’s Elements, and describes every denomination of geometrical outline, the favourite one bring an acute crescent, when the van at the rear of the train comes up at right angles with the engine, just to allow the driver and guard to shake hands, and show that, if the engine is ill-tempered, and the wagons are emphatic in their contempt for each other, they, at least, are friends.

Incline staff, no matter how diligent, were hostages to fortune. Wagons would arrive from the quarries and, prior to their descent, were fastened by chains to a continuous wire rope. But the knots could slip, lose tension or come undone. Denis Kay holding the brake for The heyday of this line was in the 1930s when it was extensively used by ramblers because of its proximity to Dovedale. For a time, there was also a through service between London (Euston) and Denis Kay took his place under this sword of Damocles in 1955. The first rung on his career ladder was as a ‘taker-off’ at Sheep Pasture Bottom – removing the chains and liberating the wagons for transit to High Peak Junction. Promotion followed to head shunter, taking charge of movements on the incline, and becoming a ‘hanger-on’.There is not even the stumpy church tower to be seen mixed up in trees, and rising above grey old gabled farm buildings, at these High Peak out-of-the-world stations. For those wishing to explore the trails further, the High Peak Trail joins the Tissington Trail at Parsley Hay. We recommend that cyclists and horse riders follow the trail to the west of Middleton Top Countryside Centre to avoid steep inclines. Part of the route included the Hopton Incline. This was a very steep section of the railway about a mile north of the small village of Hopton. It was originally worked by a stationary steam engine but was modified later to be adhesion worked by locomotives. At 1 in 14 (7%), it was the steepest in Britain and trains frequently had to be split and pulled up a few wagons at a time. The High Peak Trail is a 17.5-mile trail from High Peak Junction, near Cromford to Dowlow near Buxton.