page_title: Lancaster and Carlisle Railway
section_title: The Commission on Railway Communication
hierarchical_section_title: Lancaster and Carlisle Railway / The Commission on Railway Communication
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagram showing nineteenth century counter-proposals for a railway route from Lancaster to Carlisle, Cumbria, England
context_page_description: The Lancaster and Carlisle Railway was a main line railway opened between those cities in 1846. With its Scottish counterpart, the Caledonian Railway, the Company launched the first continuous railway connection between the English railway network and the emerging network in central Scotland. The selection of its route was controversial, and strong arguments were put forward in favour of alternatives, in some cases avoiding the steep gradients, or connecting more population centres. Generating financial support for such a long railway was a challenge, and induced the engineer Joseph Locke to make a last-minute change to the route: in the interests of economy and speed of construction, he eliminated a summit tunnel at the expense of steeper gradients.
  The sparseness of the population discouraged the addition of branch lines, with a small number of exceptions, although several east-west secondary routes made independent connection to the route.
context_section_description: Carlisle was not the ultimate destination in these considerations: the issue was a route between the emerging English network and central Scotland. Although Lancaster was an obvious starting point for a westerly route, there were advocates for an eastern route from York. Here too the terrain northwards was a major difficulty: selection of the route of such a line within Scotland was just as controversial as that in England, and it incorporated just as great a difficulty in finding a practicable route.
  At the time there was a firm belief that only one such route could be sustained, and the Government took the unusual step of establishing a Commission on Railway Communication to determine what that route should be. The Commission was appointed in November 1839 and had two members, Lt Col Sir Frederic Smith and Peter Barlow, Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Their task was to examine the whole question of railway communication between England and Scotland, as well as between London and Ireland.
  The Smith and Barlow Commission became bogged down by energetic advocacy of rival schemes, and their first report of May 1840 was ambiguous. However it rejected the Stephenson scheme for a Cumberland coast railway. They suggested that a route combining the Lancaster to Kendal part of the Long Sleddale route and the northern part of the Lune Valley route might be feasible. George Larmer, working as Locke's local engineering representative while Locke was engaged elsewhere, quickly surveyed the connecting link from near Kendal to Borrowbridge in the Lune Valley, finding a route that offered reasonable gradients.
  The commission issued a second report in November 1840, which approved Larmer's route, which became the preferred option for a Lancaster to Carlisle line. The Commission stuck to the policy that only one Anglo-Scottish route was viable, but it refrained from any definite recommendation as between west and east coasts. Their opinion was becoming irrelevant, as the west coast faction was now building to Lancaster, and the east coast railways were shortly to reach Newcastle.
caption: Later proposals to reach Carlisle
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