Matt Ditch Photography Blog

  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...

The Owd Ratty - History & the line to Boot History of the “Owd Ratty” I’ve long been fascinated with the history of the orignal Ravenglass & Eskdale railway, or “Owd Ratty” as it is now known. Originally the line was built to 3 foot gauge and opened in May 1875 to transport Iron Ore from mines around Boot to the Furness Railway at Ravenglass, a distance of around 7 miles. During the winter of 1876 a passenger service was added after the locals campaigned for it. This made the railway the first public narrow gauge railway in England. Unfortunately the cost of upgrading the line for passenger use left the railway in serious debt, which resulted the railway declaring itself bankrupt a year later in 1877. This, however wasn’t the end of the “Owd Ratty”. The railway continued on under the control of the the receivers. The railway was dealt another setback when the Iron Ore mines it was built to serve closed. Thankfully local traffic (passengers and local goods) managed to keep th...