It’s been a long time since we travelled on this one. In the intervening half a century, or so, the L&HR appears to have just carried on doing its own thing and doing it very nicely. Its own thing is taking full advantage of its Lake District location and selling itself very effectively as a tourist railway. Proximity to the honey-pot sites at Windermere and Bowness helps in this respect and the link with the lake ferries is a key component. Foreign visitors and coach parties are very much part of the formula.
The same three British Railways survivors from the age of
steam are still here but although the Ivatt Class 2 was resplendent in the
yard, she too was receiving attention, whilst the two unique Fairburn tanks
were both out of action in the sheds. It was left to the Hunslet WD industrial No.
25 Sapper, lined out in an attractive Kent and East Sussex Railway livery to
provide passenger services on the day.
The short journey up the side of the River Leven passes the
important industrial heritage site at Backbarrow, where remaining evidence of
eighteenth-century iron making is gradually being appropriately preserved. The
hotel we stayed in there was once a factory making the blue dye used in soap
powders. I came here by coach as part of a six-form field course based near
Carlisle in 1966, and remember our geography teacher, Brian Gordon, pointing out
that the windows of the factory were all stained blue as a result of the
no-doubt rather uncomfortable working practices taking place inside.
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