Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway

The Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway (P&DR) was a 4 ft 6 in (1,372 mm) gauge railway built to improve the economy of moorland areas around Princetown in Devon, England. Independent carriers operated horse-drawn wagons and paid the company a toll. It opened in 1823, and a number of short branches were built in the next few years.

The Lee Moor Tramway (LMT) was opened as a branch of the original line in 1856; the extraction of china clay had become an important industry, and the LMT brought the mineral down to processing areas and to shipment at Plymouth. The LMT too operated with horse traction, in conjunction with steam locomotives and rope worked inclines.

The Omen Beam Tramway was an independent tramway for the gathering of peat from the moor above Dartmoor prison, for the manufacturing of naphtha.

The P&DR cost much more than the estimate and the intended generation of agriculture on the moor did not take place. The railway was dominated by a trading company who used it for bringing granite to Plymouth for coastal shipping transport. China clay deposits on Lee Moor were exploited and a branch of the P&DR was built to bring the mineral to Plymouth. The originally P&DR line declined and its upper section was later adopted for a branch line, but the LMT branch, and a short section of the lower end of the P&DR, remained in use until 1960. The line crossed the important Exeter to Plymouth main line on the flat, and many photographs have been circulated depicting the incongruous sight of the horse-drawn wagons crossing the busy main line railway.

Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was a substantial and philanthropic landowner in Devon and Cornwall. He had founded the settlement that he called Princetown, on Dartmoor, and he was anxious to improve the living conditions of the inhabitants. Dartmoor prison had been completed at Princetown in 1809 as a prisoner-of-war detention facility, but the peace following 1815 emptied the prison. Tyrwhitt wished to improve agriculture and extractive industries on Dartmoor, and he conceived the idea of a railway to connect Princetown and Plymouth. This was to bring lime and sea-sand up to the Moor for the improvement of land, together with timber and coal. Granite, peat, mineral products and agricultural produce would be carried down. Goods would be conveyed in wagons drawn by horses, on the turnpike principle, in which all-comers might run their wagons on the railway on payment of a toll.

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