Matt Ditch Photography Blog

  River Esk's 100th centenary gala 29/04/23 Here are my pictures from River Esk's 100th centenary gala on 29/04/23. As always the whole gallery  can be found here . But, below are a few of my favorites.

  From Owd to La'al Ratty "Bonnie Dundee" in tank form on the turntable at Dalegarth. © Copyright Malcolm Neal and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.  In two previous post I detailed the history of the “Owd Ratty”. The orignal 3 foot gauge Ravenglass & Eskdale Railway which operated between 1875 & 1913. You can find these posts Part 1 & Part 2 In 1915 model makers Wenman Joseph Bassett-Lowke & Robert Proctor-Mitchell were looking for somewhere to test their own locomotives. They came across the disused “Owd Ratty” and quickly set about regauging the line. The section between Ravenglass and Muncaster was the first to reopen in late August of 1915. Most of the line was converted in sections from 1917. But it wasn’t till the mid-1920s that the present-day terminus at Dalegarth was reached. For a time the line did run into the old station at Boot. But the gradients on that section of the line were too much for the scale engines. The curr...

  The Owd Ratty: Gill Force Tramway The present day terminus for the railway is built on the formation of the Gill Force Tramway. This 1951 shot shows "The Pretender" waiting to take a train back down the valley to Ravenglass. Ben Brooksbank Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0 In the previous post (link here) I covered the history of the Owd Ratty and the line up to Boot in Eskdale. I mentioned that at Gill Force junction the line split and a tramway ran to the mines at Gill Force. The history of this part of the Owd Ratty is not as well documented as the Boot branch and to date there are no known images of the line. What is known is that the line was built in 1880 for the “South Cumberland Iron Company” they were looking for Iron ore on the opposite side of the valley to the mines at Nab Gill. The mines weren’t very successful and only lasted a few years closing completely in 1884. The site of Gill Force junction today. As I stated in the last post, th...