page_title: Cornwall Railway
section_title: General description
hierarchical_section_title: Cornwall Railway / General description
caption_attribution_description: English: System map of the Cornwall Railway, England on opening
context_page_description: The Cornwall Railway was a 7 ft ¹⁄₄ in broad gauge railway from Plymouth in Devon to Falmouth in Cornwall, England, built in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was constantly beset with shortage of capital for the construction, and was eventually forced to sell its line to the dominant Great Western Railway.
  It was famous for building the majestic Royal Albert Bridge over the River Tamar, and because of the difficult terrain it traversed, it had a large number of viaducts; because of the shortage of money these were built as timber trestle viaducts, proving to be iconic images but a source of heavy maintenance costs, eventually needing to be reconstructed in more durable materials.
  Its main line was the key route to many of the holiday destinations of Cornwall, and in the first half of the 20th century it carried holidaymakers in summer, as well as vegetables, fish and cut flowers from Cornwall to markets in London and elsewhere in England. The section from Truro to Falmouth, originally part of its main line, never fulfilled its potential and soon became a branch line.
context_section_description: The Cornwall Railway was conceived because of fears that Falmouth would lose out, as a port, to Southampton. Falmouth had for many years had nearly all of the packet trade: dispatches from the Colonies and overseas territories arrived by ship and were conveyed to London by road coach. The primitive roads of those days made this a slow business and Southampton was developing in importance. The completion of the London and Southampton Railway in 1840 meant that dispatches could be taken on to London swiftly by train.
caption: Map of the Cornwall Railway
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