Portland’s pioneering railway.

One of Dorset’s first railways was built on the Isle of Portland. Opening in 1826, it was not designed to carry passengers but to carry Portland stone. It was a response to a growing demand for the stone and to improve transportation between the quarries and the shipment point at Castletown Pier. Here stone was loaded onto ships. The railway cost £5,000 to build which was financed by the issue by the Portland Railway Company of a hundred fifty pound shares. Income was generated by the quarry operators who used it. The company had been formed two years earlier by local residents and people involved in the stone trade.

The railway had no power other than gravity. The weight of the loaded wagon descending pulled by cable the empty wagon back up the slope. Bizarrely, the track had just three rails on stone sleepers with the middle rail shared by both wagons. However, at the mid-point there were separate tracks to enable the two wagons to cross over. At the top of the slope there was a braked cable drum which controlled the wagon’s descent. The railway had an unusual gauge of 4ft 6ins which made a later connection to the lines of other railway companies extremely difficult. For many years, the Portland Railwsy proved the safest method to transport the stone down the treacherous incline. However, there are reports it was not well-maintained which led to breakdowns.

By the 1850s Portland’s quarries were joined by a network of horse-drawn railways of which the Portland Railway was an important part. In 1886, another company which intended to change the railway gauge failed in its attempt to take over the Portland Railway.

It was known as the Merchant’s Railway and also the Freeman’s Incline. After 1861, locally it was also referred to as the Blondin. This was after the world-famous tight rope walker who had visited Weymouth that year. Slackness in the stone trade due to the war led to its closure in September 1939. During World War I, it had kept open until 1917 and then reopened in 1920 when business boomed.

Closure deprived visitors to the Isle of Portman the sight of blocks of stone being drawn by teams of horses making their circuitous way to the cable drum and then being lowered down the slope. It was not until the 1950s that the track was removed and sold for scrap.

As one of the country’s earliest railways, the Portland Railway justifiably has a place in railway history.

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