page_title: Mansfield and Pinxton Railway
section_title: Opening and early operation
hierarchical_section_title: Mansfield and Pinxton Railway / Opening and early operation
caption_attribution_description: English: Kings Mill Viaduct. Dating from 1817, Kings Mill Viaduct carried the Mansfield and Pinxton tramway across a small stream. The main line (still open as part of the Robin Hood line) was diverted round this section of the tramway; the viaduct now carries a footpath.
context_page_description: The Mansfield and Pinxton Railway was an early horse-drawn railway in the United Kingdom. It was completed in 1819, to make a transport link between Mansfield and the Cromford Canal at Pinxton. An important traffic was coal inward to Mansfield, as coal deposits near there were too deep to be extracted economically at the time; minerals, malt and other manufactures were exported from Mansfield. Collieries along the line of route were developed as time went on.
  From 1847 the Midland Railway developed a railway network in the locality of Mansfield, and purchased the M&PR, converting it to be suitable for locomotive use and incorporating it in its own network.
  In the second half of the twentieth century, passenger and ordinary goods business in the Mansfield area declined substantially, leaving only a limited coal traffic via Codnor Park from 1970. The passenger service from Nottingham to Mansfield was revived under the marketing title The Robin Hood Line, opening to Mansfield in 1995, using the section of the original M&PR, as modified by the Midland Railway, from Kirkby to Mansfield. The mineral traffic flow from Codnor Park continues.
context_section_description: The line was opened on 13 April 1819, when "the first load of coals was brought in to the Company's wharf [at Mansfield]... the coal was unloaded and taken to the market place where it was heaped up and set on fire." This was evidently a major event in the locality: crowds met the incoming train at the five-arch bridge "where they met ten waggons laden with coal from the Pinxton colliery... the assemblage amounted to some thousands... Having arrived at the market-place about three o'clock, which, not withstanding the heavy rain falling at the time was thronged with people, the band struck up "God Save the King"... Nearly three hundred of the workmen who had been employed during the last three months on the road, then returned to partake of a dinner, provided for them by the proprietors, at different public houses in the town."
  The Mansfield terminal was Portland Wharf, alongside White Bear Lane. Bullocks were used as the motive power at first, and later horses were substituted. The railway was to be operated as a toll road: tonnage rates were set; owners of land adjacent to the line were to establish wharfs (goods sidings) and the company could step in if they failed to do so.
  The line was double track, ​8 ¹⁄₄ miles long. From Mansfield to the summit level there was a rise of 89 ft; it then fell 181 feet to the Pinxton terminal. The summit was a little under half way from Mansfield. The track consisted of fish-bellied cast iron edge rails; the rails used a form of scarfed joints on stone block sleepers. The selection of edge rails was not without controversy: plate rails (where the wagon wheels are plain and the plate provides the flange for containment) have the advantage that the wagons can leave the track and be manoeuvred on an ordinary flat surface. Losing that advantage was only justified if edge rails enabled heavier loads to be hauled by a horse; there seemed to be a lack of objective evidence on that point.
  The track gauge was 4 ft ​4 ¹⁄₂ in. The Board of Trade Inspecting Officer visited on 25 September 1849, and his report mistakenly refers to a gauge of 4 ft 4 in.
caption: Kings Mill Viaduct carried the Mansfield and Pinxton Railway across a small stream. The viaduct now carries a footpath.
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