Lickey Incline

The Lickey Incline, south of Birmingham, is the steepest sustained main-line railway incline in Great Britain. The climb is a gradient of 1 in 37.7 (2.65% or 26.5‰ or 1.52°) for a continuous distance of two miles (3.2 km). It is located on the Cross Country Route between Barnt Green and Bromsgrove stations in Worcestershire.

Some trains still require the assistance of banking locomotives to ensure that the train reaches the top.

It is part of the Birmingham and Gloucester Railway, surveyed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1832, who suggested a route well to the east. William Moorsom was asked to take over, with his remuneration linked to the savings he achieved. At the time, most railways were for difficult terrain between canals, and the use of cable assistance would not have seemed unreasonable. (When Brunel, for instance, first surveyed the GWR, he planned to use cable assistance in the Box Tunnel.)

The climb is just over 2 miles (3.2 km), at an average gradient of 1 in 37.7 (2.65%), between Bromsgrove and Blackwell (near Barnt Green). It is on the railway line between Birmingham and Gloucester (grid reference SO985710). The Lickey Incline is the steepest sustained adhesion-worked gradient on a British standard gauge railway. It climbs into Birmingham from the south over the Bunter geological formation (one or two exposures are visible from the track-side), and passes about 1 ¹⁄₂ miles (2.4 km) away from the Lickey Hills, a well-known local beauty spot.

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