Edenham & Little Bytham Railway

The Edenham & Little Bytham Railway was a railway company formed by Lord Willoughby de Eresby to build a line from the Great Northern Railway at Little Bytham to Edenham, serving the villages of Edenham and Grimsthorpe and also Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire, England.

The railway was originally constructed as a road, at the personal expense of Peter, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, between 1851 and 1853. In 1854 and 1855 an early traction engine, "Ophir", built at Swindon Railway Works and possibly designed by Daniel Gooch, hauled wagons on this road.

Adhesion problems and steep gradients of 1 in 30 and 1 in 27 led to an experimental conversion of short stretches to a wooden tramway, and it was decided in March 1855 to convert the entire line to a standard- gauge railway. Ophir was returned to Swindon to be rebuilt with flanged wheels, returning in November 1855, and the railway completed by the summer of 1856.

The road and its conversion were described in "A Letter on Branch Railways Addressed to the Right Honourable, Lord Stanley of Alderley" , in a section concerning the use of private roads as alternatives to railways:
The last attempt of the kind, and not the least interesting, is that which has recently been made by Lord Willoughby d'Eresby, on a private road four miles in length, leading from the village of Edenham in Lincolnshire to the Little Bytham Station, on the Great Northern Railway. In this case a solid roadway was formed of two parallel lines of contiguous wooden blocks laid level with the surface of the road, on which it was attempted to work a very perfect small 8-inch cylindered locomotive with flat wheels, built at the Swindon works. The experiment, which was in every respect well carried out^ and is worthy of record, removed the last existing doubt upon the subject; it was ultimately found necessary to place iron rails upon this solid block-road, and the Edenham Tramway, liberally designed for the benefit of the tenants of the Grimsthorpe estate, is now converted into a Railway of the usual gauge, and worked by a locomotive and carriages with flanged wheels.

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