[Don't mind me. I'm just a line bump]
Early Railways and the Sodor & Mainland Railway
Written and Researched by BNSF1995 and Victor Tanzig
Mini-Tale Written by Victor Tanzig
Proofread and Corrected by Broa Island
The Island of Sodor. A large patch of land sitting within the Cumbrian Sea between the British mainland and the Isle of Man. Its economy is primarily agricultural, with grains, fruits, vegetables, livestock, and processed foods the rule.
I'll just skip the medieval times because all that has been well and accurately documented. I'll instead skip ahead to the 19th century, and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Back in those days, Sodor was considered the armpit of the United Kingdom, a backwater island with a few farms and churches here and there, but nothing really significant. That all changed with the discovery of copper ore on the lower slopes of Ward Fell in 1796. Immediately, surveyors began plotting a route for a plateway, which was opened in 1806. The plateway, simply known as "The Railroad", was powered by horses and gravity. The ore was brought to Cros-ny-Cuirn by packhorses and sent down in wagons to Balladwail for shipment. The Inn at Glennock was used as a staging point by the pack-horse boys on their upwards journey.
The Mining Company relaid this line in 1820 with "fish-belly" edge rail and extended it up the Benglas valley to the mine. It was called quite simply "The Railroad", for there was no other in the whole Island, and it was considered a marvel in its day. From Cros-ny-Cuirn a chain of five successive inclines strode boldly up to Ward Fell, and their remains, much overgrown, can still be seen from the road north of the level-crossing at Cros-ny-Cuirn.
Following the Ffestiniog Railway's lead in 1863, improvements were called for. It was decided to replace the packhorses with steam locomotives and James Spooner was engaged to survey a new route suitably graded for them. It was initially intended for the line to be for minerals only like its predecessor but following the rediscovery of the ancient hollow of Skarloey the Board's thinking underwent a change. The line was opened in 1865, renamed to the Skarloey Railway.
Meanwhile, in 1836, the island received its first true railway, the Cronk and Harwick Light Railway. The IOS book claims it opened in 1850, but this is only because of conflicting information the Awdrys got from locals. The line was run by two steam locomotives: Novelty and a twin, both of them faceless. A year after the railway opened, though, the banks collapsed, and the railway was put into receivership. The intention was to build all the way to Cronk on Sodor's temperate southern coast, but after the bank collapse, it only got as far as Cregwir. Due to the hostile climate of Northern Sodor, the railway never turned a profit, ultimately closing in 1839, the two steam locomotives put into a shed.
Southern Sodor was due to receive its own railway soon enough. In 1849, a retired captain from the Navy named Sir Richard Silas Cantebury came to the island. Despite his less-than-reputable heritage (his father had participated in the Battle of Bunker Hill), the island accept him. A former naval engineer, Cantebury had a vision for Sodor: a railway linking the island to the mainland. And so, on August 1, 1849, with an Act of Parliament, Sodor joined the dying Railway Mania with the creation of the Sodor & Mainland Railway. Headquartered in Vicarstown, the railway initially used the Novelty engines used by the failed Cronk and Harwick Light Railway, with which they built a railway from Vicarstown to Kirk Ronan. This turned out to be a very smart bet, as a major shipyard was located at Kirk Ronan. By 1854, negotiations concluded with the landowners around Kirk Ronan to set up a small railway to service the Middle and Dolan Shipbuilders, after the shipbuilders, with government insistence, stepped up production of frigates as the situation in the Crimean Peninsula heated up. The Novelty engines served well initially, but a boom in traffic in the 1850s saw them rapidly outmoded. And so, in 1856, the railway ordered its first three locomotives from the Neilson & Co workshops in Glasgow Scotland.
It was in these grimy, dirty places that history was made…
In 1856, four workmen stood around the small square-shaped tank engine just outside the workshop. It was fresh off the production line and almost ready to be shipped off to the Isle of Sodor.
"Alright lads," said one man, "This one's good for a firing. Light her up Glynn!"
"Will do," replied the man named Glynn. He climbed into the locomotive's roofless cab and struck a match. He tossed the match into the engine's firebox, the coal inside immediately burst into flames and the engine quickly built up steam. "Blimey! She lit up good and quick."
Suddenly, from around the front of the machine, came a yawn louder then an average human's.
"What was that?" quizzed a man, a bit unsettled.
Another man let out a frustrated sigh. He stormed over to the where the yawn came from. "McGee, I swear to the Virgin Mary, if I find you dozing on the job again-"
"Hello there," said the locomotive cheerfully. "I'm Clive. What's your name?"
The man looked as if he'd just been given the sack! "SWEET MOTHER OF MERCY!"
"What is it Hamish?" asked one of his mates.
"I- I- IT'S ALIVE!"
"What is?"
"THE ENGINE! IT'S BLOOMIN' ALIVE!"
"Don't be daft!"
"IT'S NOT DAFT, IT'S LIVING, IT'S BREATHING, IT'S EVEN GROWN A FACE ON THE SMOKEBOX! COME SEE FOR YOURSELVES!"
Clive's awakening caused quite a stir. The workers were absolutely dumbfounded by this, as was society in general. Every square-inch of the boxy engine was examined (with his permission I might add) to determine how he'd come to life. Nothing came of it, however. Nobody could explain it, not even the men built him, who went on to do it two more times. Clive and his brothers, Neil and Mathew, were the first non-faceless vehicles, kicking off a new age for mankind, who were now not the only race of intelligent life on planet Earth.
As technology advanced, more of the non-faceless began appearing, on land, air, and sea, and not just in the United Kingdom either. As we would discover upon further examinations and experiments, these sentient machines had a number of advantages over their inanimate cousins. But they also had some disadvantages too. The specifics of these we'll dive into on a later date.
Clive, Neil, and Mathew were shipped to Sodor as originally planned, where they numbered as the S&M's #1, #2, and #3 respectively. The two Novelty locomotives were donated to the Kirk Ronan History Museum, where they remain to this day, lovingly maintained and with plans to restore them to operation in the future.
The S&M was an absolute success, mainly thanks to the shipyards. The three box tanks were kept very busy with these jobs, but they earned their keep during the Harvest of 1857, when they moved more crops to market than horse-drawn carts. All of a sudden, people began seeing the value of Sodor as a breadbasket. In addition, robber barons found Sodor to be a tax haven, and the island rapidly began to industrialize.
With all this traffic, the S&M purchased three more box tanks from Neilson & Co. They were #4 Sampson, #5 Mary (the first female non-faceless vehicle), and #6 Miller. They were key in assisting in building ships for the Confederate States of America, Brazil, and the Royal Navy, and in 1864, an experimental standard gauge version of the normally broad gauge GWR Iron Duke named Justinian, who became the S&M's #7.
I'm sorry to say the second three box tanks didn't enjoy the longevity that the first three did. In 1865, Sampson exploded at Vicarstown sheds, destroying Matthew's ability to speak, eradicating Mary's life, and wounding Richard Silas Canterbury, crippling him while also killing 19 men. In the inquiry it was determined that the safety valves had been shut off to allow more steam into the boiler. The hole was not refilled until 1951 when need for another track to leave the sheds became evident. It was filled in after Gordon tried to stop the turntable moving. The reason the hole was never filled in until that time was that Cantebury wanted a visible reminder of the costs of ignoring safety procedures and common sense.
The next year, Miller was damaged beyond repair and given the Final Firing after a collision with Justinian. The latter was also sent away after he refused to take responsibility for the incident and said Miller deserved to die; Justinian would later be given the Final Firing against his will by scrap thieves.
Now down to three locomotives, the S&M struggled on until 1876, when Cantebury purchased nine Class 25 locomotives from the Lancanshire & Yorkshire Railway. Known to locals as the "Red Engines", their names were Eagle, Michael, Ringo, George, Johnny, Britt, Richard, Alec, and Brandon. Upon reaching Sodor, the nine were modified with a leading pony truck, and were reclassified as the S&M Class G4. During their time on the S&M, they were never numbered, as Cantebury just didn't have the heart to reassign the numbers of the three lost box tanks. Their introduction into service was a godsend for the S&M, especially as the S&M began to expand. In 1881, they built a branch line to the company town of Great Waterton, and in 1876, began an ambitious project to build a line to Cregwir and Ballaswein, but this stalled out when Cantebury surveyed the route and found that building and maintaining a railway in Sodor's cold northern areas would be a veritable hell. Therefore, construction ceased in 1889, having gotten as far as the Rolling River Bridge, which was completed by never used, standing until it collapsed in 1955.
Another major project undertaken by the S&M was the Norramby Branch Line. Built in 1891, the branch was built to serve the fishing industry at Norramby.
The railway's fortunes turned sour, however, and by 1910, the railway was in receivership. In the intervening years, the railway had acquired two more non-faceless locomotives: a Stirling Single from the Great Northern Railway named Emily, and a L&YR Class 2 designed by John Aspinall named Ruby (who became the S&M's #5). It's worth noting that the latter's nameplates reads "The Crescent Rose" as that's what Mr. Aspinall originally wished to named her before her First Firing.
In 1914, the S&M ceased to exist, as it merged with the other major standard gauge railway on Sodor. But that's a story for another day...