Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway
defunct railway in Cornwall, England
The Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway was a railway line opened in 1834 in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It linked the quays at Wadebridge with the town of Bodmin and also to quarries at Wenfordbridge. Its intended traffic was minerals to the port at Wadebridge and sea sand, used to improve agricultural land, inwards. Passengers were also carried on part of the line.
It was the first steam-powered railway line in the county and predated the main line to London by 25 years.
It was always desperately short of money, both for initial construction and for actual operation. In 1847 it was purchased by the London and South Western Railway, when that company hoped to gain early access to Cornwall for its network, but in fact those intentions were much delayed, and the little line was long isolated.
China clay extraction was developed at Wenfordbridge and sustained mineral traffic on the line for many years, but passenger use declined and the line closed to passengers in 1967, the china clay traffic continuing until 1978.
Much of the route now forms part of the Camel Trail, a cycle and footpath from Wenfordbridge to Padstow.
Origins
Local interests obtained an act of Parliament, the Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bodmin and Wadebridge Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.