Penlee Quarry railway

Penlee Quarry railway
Locale	England
Dates of operation	about 1900 – 1970s
Track gauge	2 ft (610 mm)
Length	½ miles
Headquarters	Newlyn

The Penlee Quarry railway was an industrial narrow gauge railway serving the Penlee Quarry at Newlyn in Cornwall. Its was England's most westerly railway and one of the last operating narrow gauge industrial railways in the UK.

History

Quarrying at Penlee dates back to the early 1800s when a copper mine was opened. Although large-scale copper mining never took place here, good quantities of "armourstone" and aggregates were discovered. These were recovered from an open cast quarry beginning in 1890.

By 1900 the quarry had shown its potential and the volume of stone extracted required a transportation system to move aggregate from the quarry to the nearby coastal piers. Around 1900 a 2 ft (610 mm) gauge narrow gauge railway was opened to connect the quarry with Newlyn harbour, approximately ½ mile away. A steam locomotive named Koppel was purchased to work this line.

Internal combustion locomotives replaced steam from 1930 onwards and the quarry continued to produce large amounts of aggregates for the building industry through much of the twentieth century.

Present day

The quarry was closed in the 1970s and the railway abandoned. There are now plans to reopen the quarry as a marina.

Locomotives

Name	Number	Builder	Type	Date	Works number	Notes
Koppel		Orenstein & Koppel	0-4-0WT	1900		Renamed Penlee in 1914. Withdrawn in 1946 and preserved at Newlyn harbour. Now under restoration at the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway
Penlee	LM1	Kerr Stuart	4wDM	1930	4468	Withdrawn 1961; scrapped 1965
	LM2	Hunslet	4wDM	1942	2665	Acquired from Tarslag Ltd, Winslow in 1947; withdrawn 1958; scrapped 1965
Penlee	LM3	Hunslet	4wDM	1942	2666	Acquired from Tarslag Ltd, Winslow in 1947; withdrawn 1958
	LM4	Orenstein & Koppel	4wDM	1942		Scrapped 1953
T.W. Lewis	LM39	Ruston Hornsby	4wDM	1954	375316
J.W. Jenkin	LM40	Ruston Hornsby	4wDM	1954	375315
	LM44	Ruston Hornsby	4wDM	1947	246793	Acquired from MacSalvors Ltd, Pool, Camborne in 1962
	LM45	Ruston Hornsby	4wDM	1942	213848	Acquired from MacSalvors Ltd, Pool, Camborne in 1962
	LM46	Ruston Hornsby	4wDM	1951	287664	Acquired from MacSalvors Ltd, Pool, Camborne in 1963

References

• Farmer, Keith (August 1968). "Amalgamated Roadstone". Industrial Railway Record 20: 269-281/288. 

See also

• British industrial narrow gauge railways