Penlee Quarry railway

Infobox rail
railroad_name=Penlee Quarry railway
gauge=RailGauge|24
start_year=about 1900
end_year=1970s
length=½ miles
hq_city=Newlyn
locale=Cornwall
successor=Abandoned

The Penlee Quarry railway was an industrial narrow gauge railway serving the Penlee Quarry at Newlyn in Cornwall. It was Cornwall's most westerly railway and one of the last operating narrow gauge industrial railways in the UK.

History

Quarrying at Penlee dates back to the early 1800s when a copper mine was opened. Although large-scale copper mining never took place here, good quantities of "armourstone" and aggregates were discovered. These were recovered from an open cast quarry beginning in 1890.

By 1900 the quarry had shown its potential and the volume of stone extracted required a transportation system to move aggregate from the quarry to the nearby coastal piers. Around 1900 a RailGauge|24 gauge narrow gauge railway was opened to connect the quarry with Newlyn harbour, approximately ½ mile away. A steam locomotive named "Koppel" was purchased to work this line.

Internal combustion locomotives replaced steam from 1930 onwards and the quarry continued to produce large amounts of aggregates for the building industry through much of the twentieth century.

Present day

The quarry was closed in the 1970s and the railway abandoned. There are now plans to reopen the quarry as a marina.

Locomotives

References

*

ee also

* British industrial narrow gauge railways