The Wisbech & Upwell Tramway
- The Wisbech & Upwell Tramway
- East Anglia, the oft-overlooked back garden of England, though sparsely populated, was provided with an abundance of railways. Here, in the eyes of many could be found the finest expression of an English Country Railway. It was an area of Main Lines, exquisite branches and engineering features of a scale and complexity startling in such a flat and apparently benign landscape. It was characterised by delighful rural railways amongst which lay the unique Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, ambling along the roadside that intermittently formed the Cambridgeshire-Norfolk border.
- By the 1950s large parts of the rambling system in the eastern counties had been facing closure for a number of years. When the closures eventually came, they were severe in the extreme, but astonshingly, admidst widespread destruction the Wishbech and Upwell survived. The tramway, built by the Great Eastern Railway more or less as an extended siding, was the last example of its type (described on more than one occasion as a judicious cross between the railway proper and an ordinary tram) to operate in this country.
- Having given over to diesel power in 1952, some years before BR announced a general change to this form of traction, the line clung tenaciously to life through to the sixties. Its wagons and diminutive screened-in locomotives, trundling across and along roads, past gardens and local pubs, churches and post office were left-overs, reminders of a slower, more relaxed but vanished era. It is hoped that this booklet may allow the reader to sample, at least in part, the atmosphere of this remarkable East Anglian byway.
- 1982, 56 pages. Laminated Card Cover
- Wild Swan Publications
- ISBN-10 0906867096
- ISBN-13 9780906867099
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