Sheffield and Rotherham Railway

Sheffield and Rotherham Railway
Westgate Station c1840
Overview
Type	Heavy rail
Locale	South Yorkshire, England
Operation
Opened	31 October 1838
Closed	21 July 1845 (line and operations taken over by the Midland Railway)
Technical
Line length	5 miles (8.0 km)
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

The Sheffield and Rotherham Railway was a short railway in England, between Sheffield and Rotherham and the first in the two towns.

In the early nineteenth century, when news broke of the building of the North Midland Railway, it was clear that George Stephenson would follow the gentle gradient of the Rivers Rother and Don, bypassing Sheffield. Stephenson known for his railway building techniques never built lines with gradients higher than 1 in 130. Despite representations by Sheffield people, who engaged Joseph Locke to state their case, and from Charles Vignoles and George Hudson to convince Stephenson to bring the NMR to Sheffield, the NMR was built via the Rother valley, to the east of Sheffield.

Much work had already been done in surveying the land between Rotherham and Sheffield with plans being put forward for a canal linking Tinsley to Sheffield earlier in the century. This was originally planned to follow a route to the north of the River Don to a basin in (or near) Saville Street. Plans were changed when it was realised that this route would preclude coal from the Duke of Norfolk's estate from directly reaching the waterway, and a new route to the south of the river used. The railway was aligned approximately north-northeast so that it also followed a gentle gradient, making use of the same route as was planned for the canal.

The act for the incorporation of the company received the Royal assent on 4 July 1836, authorising a capital of £100,000 and the facility to raise a loan of a further £30,000. A second act was obtained on 23 March 1840.

The first director was George Wilton Chambers, a coal master. Its secretary was Thomas Pearson, a civil engineer and also a coal master. The engineers were John Stephenson (not known to be a relation of George) who introduced scientific methods into earthwork construction and the excavation of deep cuttings, and Isaac Dodds whose "talent for invention was highly respected in his day" Superintending the construction was Frederick Swanwick, a pupil of George Stephenson, who was nominally engineering chief.