Lancaster and Carlisle Railway

The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&CR) was a British railway company authorised on 6 June 1844 to build a line between Lancaster and Carlisle in North West England. The line survives to the present day as part of the West Coast Main Line (WCML) route between Glasgow and London.

The directors of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway had several routes to choose when considering the line in the early 1840s. The Kendal Committee of the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway supported a line through Kendal up to Longsleddale, with a 2 mi (3.2 km) tunnel under the Gatescarth Pass into Mardale and onto Bampton. Engineer Thomas Bouch, of the Cockermouth, Keswick and Penrith Railway was approached to be an adviser on the Kendal-Longsleddale route. It is probable that Bouch would have been appointed as the civil and railway engineer if it had been chosen (he would later gain notoriety for the Tay Railway Bridge disaster). The Longsleddale route "had it ever been built, would have been as dramatic and awe-inspiring as any in Britain". It would also have been less steep than the 1 in 70 gradient up and over Shap Fell and the need for banking engines would have been reduced or even not required.

An alternative route was proposed by George Stephenson, who had surveyed the route in 1835. His line would go round the Cumberland coast, bypassing Shap and cross Morecambe Bay over a purpose-built a barrage. But after a lengthy Parliamentary inquiry, a longer and steeper route through the Lune Gorge and over Shap Fell was chosen. It had been proposed by Joseph Locke who had been surveying routes between the two cities since 1836. A station would be built at the nearby village of Oxenholme as Kendal would not be on the mainline.

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