After the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th Centuries, there was obviously great demand for iron ore to be pulled from the ground wherever it could be found. One of these places was West Cumberland, home to both the largest hills in all of England and, by the 1870s, a series of railways that had been built to exploit the various minerals that lay in various parts of those hills. The Furness Railway had opened back in 1846 at the very southern end of the county to connect the slate quarries of Kirkby-in-Furness and the iron ore deposits at Lindal with a shipping berth at Roa Island. In 1850, this small line was met by the Whitehaven and Furness Railway, a line which ran along the western coast through such towns as Sellafield, Seascale and Ravenglass to reach Whitehaven, a town which had been connected to the national network via the Whitehaven Junction Railway to Carlisle since 1847. By 1857, the Furness railway had managed to finish a link through to Lancaster, providing an easy way of transporting goods mined out of the Cumbrian countryside to the rest of the country.

While the largest deposits lay both to the north and the south-west of the quiet Eskdale valley, the iron ore deposits near Boot at the north end of the valley had been known of since Roman times. An ironworks had been constructed nearby in 1638, but it was only when the industrial revolution brought about the huge steelworks at Workington and Barrow that the iron ore was properly exploited. During the early 1870s, a few trial drifts were opened by the Whitehaven Mining Company, with the ore being moved by pack mule to the mainline railway at Brigg, a short way north of Ravenglass.

The Whitehaven Mining Company Years

An Act was passed in 1873 to allow the construction of a three-foot gauge light railway between Boot and Ravenglass, including powers to build a branch at Ravenglass right up to the seashore - it would seem that the Whitehaven Mining Company expected to produce enough ore to warrant a harbour at Ravenglass, which, although once a small but busy port, had by then silted over thanks to the efforts of the Rivers Mite and Irt. The railway was laid using light flat-bottomed Vignoles rails¹ and a three-foot gauge - the only other railway in England to use this gauge was the Southwold Railway in Suffolk.

The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway opened on 24 May, 1875, but couldn't carry passengers until improvements had been made following a detailed safety inspection by Colonel Yolland of the Board of Trade, who described the carriages as being 'masonry of such indifferent quality' and made many other scathing remarks about the line. The passenger service finally commenced a year and a half after the line had opened, with the first passenger service running on 20 November, 1876. Trains now stopped at four intermediate locations - Muncaster Mill, Irton Road, Eskdale Green and Beckfoot - although arrangements at these stations were rather primitive. The line became known locally as Owd Ratty, meaning 'old narrow way'.

The iron ore near Boot consisted of both magnetite and 'kidney' ore. The seam ran along the top of the Eskdale valley, and was worked at two main sites - one at Nab Ghyll just next to Boot, and another across the valley at Ghyll Foss on the side of Birker Fell, to which a branch known as the Gill Force tramway opened in 1881. The old route from Beckfoot to Nab Ghyll is now marked as the old 'Three Foot Way', which leaves the modern day line and heads behind the mining cottages near Dalegarth station. Meanwhile, the branch across the valley to Ghyll Foss ran through where Dalegarth station lies today and then onwards toward the River Esk, over which it was carried by an iron girder bridge before heading on towards the Ghyll Foss drift. The bridge has since been re-decked and now acts as a river crossing along the path towards the waterfalls nearby.

Receivership

In 1877, just a couple of years after the railway's opening, the Whitehaven Mining Company went bankrupt. This led to the closure of the Ghyll Foss branch; meanwhile, the Nab Ghyll mine continued to be worked. The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway Company was formed by Robert Woodley of Whitehaven along with three others, and Robert's brother Sydney was made receiver and manager of the company. He held this post until 1896, at which point he departed for the Great Central Railway and left the job to his brother Lewis. Lewis was to direct the railway up until 1911, but with the Chancery taking control for some of that time.

Despite the problems, the seasonal tourist traffic continued, with one first class and three third class carriages being provided. During the winter, one train would run up to Boot and back twice a day, with an extra service from Boot early in the morning being provided on Thursdays to help the locals reach Whitehaven market via a connecting service from Ravenglass. These services also carried mail up the valley along with various goods. During the summertime, there would be four trains a day in either direction each day, including Sundays, though it was still possible to run the line with just one engine in steam at any one time. Eventually, a similar timetable was also adopted for winter weekdays. The entire railway was run by just two locomotives - Devon and Nabb Gill - and was particularly slow, covering the seven miles in around 45-50 minutes.

The End of Owd Ratty

However, with the closure of the mines the line had to survive purely on passenger and goods traffic, and thus never raised more than it needed just to keep its head above water. Despite the increasing tourist traffic seen by the line, the money required to convert Owd Ratty into a proper passenger railway just wasn't there. In 1908, John Musgrave of Wasdale Hall and others put forward a reconstruction scheme for the line, and a prospectus was produced in July that year detailing the re-opening of the iron mines at Nab Ghyll, the initiation of stone quarry traffic from Beckfoot, and the need to relay the line and buy in a new locomotive and extra carriages to cope with the summertime traffic. Estimates for cost were worked out, and it was determined that with the sale of mortgage debentures to the public, the railway's company would have enough money to come out of receivership.

At the same time, the line's receiver and manager approached the Furness Railway with a request for new stock and for help relaying the line's track. Back in 1899, the Furness Company had included clauses in a Parliamentary Bill that would allow them to run trains along or even purchase the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway. However, the directors removed these clauses from the Bill after a petition from Lewis Woodley, and so when he approached them nine years later, they refused to help out in any way. With nothing more than insubstantial subscriptions from the public, the line struggled on, only to be closed to passengers after a complaint to the Board of Trade in November 1908. The Eskdale Rail Company was formed in 1910 to try to raise money to electrify the line, but it also failed to bring in sufficient funds. In 1912, iron ore mining in the valley ceased, and the line closed in April 1913, when the valley's last goods train stopped running. By now, the line was badly overgrown and poorly maintained to the point that when World War One came, it wasn't even suitable for scrapping. It seemed, to all intents and purposes, that the line would remain closed forever.