"MIG" wrote in message
m...

The Greenwich viaduct?

I believe that includes the only ever railway swing bridge. But that
isn't in use in that function any more.

Deptford Creek. By no means the only swing bridge - others included one over
the entrance to Royal Victoria Dock (to retain access to the Silvetown
Tramway when the North Woolwich line was diverted via Custom House), one on
the surface route over the link between the Victoria and Royal Albert Docks
(retained so that heavy freight trains would not have to negotiate the
gradients into the Connaught Tunnel), and across an Oxford Canal branch on
the entrance to Oxford Rewley Road (LMS) station. I am sure there were many
others, though I suspect Deptford Creek was the first.

Peter

"Matthew Church" wrote in message
om...
"MartinM" wrote in message
...

The Surrey Iron Railway

No other remnant of the line exists but you can "walk it" -
start at The Goat in Mitcham and follow Tramway Passage
until you reach the London to Wimbledon tram line, then the
tram follows the old railroad for some distance.

Does anyone organise walks of the line?

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes

Peter Masson wrote:
"Matthew Church" wrote in message
om...

Starting on the east side of Youngs Brewery on the Thames (east of
The
Crane pub), The Surrey Iron Railroad followed (roughly) Garratt
Lane,
passed Colliers Wood at perpendicular to the current underground
track
and slightly to the west of the LU station, then meandered down to
Carshalton terminating near the ponds.

Later it was extended to link with the Croydon Canal:

And then - as you say - follows roughly the existing line past
Stoats
Nest Station (alight here for the Derby in Epsom when it was first
built).

The bridge by the Happy Eater is intact and is the original AFAIK,
there is another bridge very close which has been partially
demolished
to allow access to a field. No other remnant of the line exists but
you can "walk it" - start at The Goat in Mitcham and follow Tramway
Passage until you reach the London to Wimbledon tram line, then the
tram follows the old railroad for some distance.

The Surrey Iron Railway ran from Wandsworth to Croydon, with branches
to
Hackbridge and the Croydon Canal Basin. After the London & Croydon
and
London & Brighton Railways opened (by 1841), the Surrey Iron Railway
was
effectively defunct, and was closed, and the company dissolved, in
August
1846. Part of the trackbed was subsequently used for the Wimbledon &
Croydon
Railway (and recently converted for Tramlink).

The nominally separate Croydon, Merstham & Godstone Railway extended
the
Croydon Iron Railway to the Greystone Lime Works.

It never got to Godstone although IIRC some of the rails ended up in
the underground stone quarry there

Its trackbed was not used
by the London & Brighton, except incidentally, but the Brighton's
route did
intersect it and obliterate its route, and the London & Brighton
purchased
the earlier company in 1838.

The mainline spur to the limeworks is still there complete with track,
between the two tunnel approaches S of the Merstham tunnels; but the
bridge which took it over the Quarry line just before the tunnel has
gone.

In article ,
kevin smith wrote:

if you are talking in the country then i Believe causey arch is the oldest
surviving "raiL" bridge in the world

Not been used to carry a railway in a very long time, though - not
since before 1800, IIRC.

'sides, if we're talking structures no longer in use then the oldest
recognisable railway structure known is clearly the Diolkos of
Corinth... (also the longest-operating public railway, in use from
about 600 BCE until around 65 CE - beat that!)

--
Andy Breen ~ Interplanetary Scintillation Research Group
http://users.aber.ac.uk/azb/
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)

"Solar Penguin" wrote in message ...
--- Matthew Church said:

MORE TRIVIA:

WTF has the Croydon Canal got to do with uk.railway ???

IIRC it was filled in and became the trackbed on the line via Forest
Hill and Sydenham.

The track runs along the bottom of the canal, the brickwork and the
old basin form part of an earlier transport system.

Quite a nice link for the SIR:

"In 1803, the Surrey Iron Railway was opened in Mitcham. It was the
first public railway to be sanctioned by Parliament and made Mitcham
the first place in the world to be served by a public railway. It used
horse drawn wagons to carry coal from the Thames at Wandsworth as far
as Croydon. On the way back from Croydon to Wandsworth, these wagons
carried flour, copper, paper and the town's most famous product -
Mitcham Lavender. The Georgian station at Mitcham is still in use, and
is one of the oldest railway stations in the world."

http://tinyurl.com/3rgo4

"The line was opened on 26th July, 1803. It was therefore the first
horse railway for public transport which was independent of a canal.
The railway was fairly level and a horse could pull five or six loaded
wagons carry over 20 tons of coal at just under 3 mph."

http://tinyurl.com/4h9wc

I drove over, and looked under, the bridge at the Dean Lane junction
with the busy A23 by the Happy Eater today and it is still very much a
bridge. When those old engineers (Jessop in this case) took on
projects they didn't do things by halves did they?! The first ever
public railway and they wanted to extend it to Portsmouth! The
Liverpool and Manchester had to go for a swim in Chat Moss, and the
next one IIRC was the London & Chatham with a colossal viaduct which
shattered the wheels of the carriages.

(Matthew Church) wrote in message . com...
"MartinM" wrote in message ...
"Henry Law" wrote in message
.. .
Chris Cook wrote:
"Matthew Church" wrote in message
om...

...built for a public railway which is still in-situ and still
performing the service for which it was built?

Clue: it lies within the M25.


Beddington Lane level crossing - age about 200 years
(Surrey Iron Rly/LBSCR/SR/BR/Tramlink)

Chris Cook
Beckenham, Kent



Isn't the main line north of Redhill on the line of the Surrey Iron
Railway? But is it the original line or the Quarry line?

The Surrey Iron Railway served the stone quarries (underground) at Quarry
Dean, Merstham; remains of one of the bridges may be seen by the Happy Eater
cafe at Hooley just N of the M23, above the old main line tunnel (not the
Quarry line). There is some original SIR rail on the corner of the A23 by
the Feathers pub in Merstham.

Thanks for that I have never found that bit of line, I will try and do
so today, but I drive past the bridge every afternoon, as do 10,000
other people, and I bet no more than 10 of us recognise it for what it
is.

Starting on the east side of Youngs Brewery on the Thames (east of The
Crane pub), The Surrey Iron Railroad followed (roughly) Garratt Lane,
passed Colliers Wood at perpendicular to the current underground track
and slightly to the west of the LU station, then meandered down to
Carshalton terminating near the ponds.

Later it was extended to link with the Croydon Canal:

MORE TRIVIA:

WTF has the Croydon Canal got to do with uk.railway ???

And then - as you say - follows roughly the existing line past Stoats
Nest Station (alight here for the Derby in Epsom when it was first
built).

The bridge by the Happy Eater is intact and is the original AFAIK,
there is another bridge very close which has been partially demolished
to allow access to a field. No other remnant of the line exists but
you can "walk it" - start at The Goat in Mitcham and follow Tramway
Passage until you reach the London to Wimbledon tram line, then the
tram follows the old railroad for some distance.

Far from there being no other remnant of the Surrey iron Railway and
its extension, the Croydon Merstham & Godstone Railway, there are
several traces if you look hard enough. There are many stone sleepers
from the line built into the wall of Youngs Brewery in Wandsworth; The
LSWR Windsor line bridge over the SIR still stands; There is a length
of track (not on its original line) in Rotary Field, Purley; the
embankment is still evident at the back of the Lion Green Road car
park in Coulsdon; and the underground mine workings in Merstham still
exist (although not very accessible). This is apart from the various
roads and passageways that have been formed on the old trackbed along
the route. That said, I can't think of any that are still performing
there original purpose. The bridge by the Happy Eater at Merstham no
longer spans a railway as the Brighton line is some distance away at
this point as it did not follow the old line exactly.

Also, there are two very obvious remanants of the Croydon Canal in the
form of the original reservoir (now South Norwood Lake) and the length
of canal now preserved in a park just off Anerley Hill (I think that's
its name)

Peter Heather

Peter Heather wrote:

and the underground mine workings in Merstham still
exist (although not very accessible).

11 miles + still accessible, although the original haulage shaft (into
what is now called Football Field on no 1 mine)
is flooded and inaccessible from the Merstham end.

"Peter Heather" wrote

Also, there are two very obvious remanants of the Croydon Canal in the
form of the original reservoir (now South Norwood Lake) and the length
of canal now preserved in a park just off Anerley Hill (I think that's
its name)


There is a bridge parapet in Croydon which I recollect is reckoned to date
back to the canal. It is over the W. Croydon rail line and is in either
Sydenham Road or Gloucester Road, I can't remember which.

There is a notch on the south side of Greenland Dock which seems to line
up with the point where the canal came in. You can see it on the Multimap
aerial photo.

I believe also that the loop of road from Regina Road to Albert Road in S.
Norwood follows the line of a meander which formed after the canal was
closed. Not sure in what manner the closed canal was flowing to form a
meander though!

I am going from memory of having read a book on the subject, but that was
quite a while ago.

In message , John Rowland
writes

The Surrey Iron Railway

Does anyone organise walks of the line?

I don't know (although the tiny Wandle Industrial Museum might).
However, I do recall that the standard short book on the SIR (*)
includes descriptions and maps of a number of walks you could take along
the line.

(*) I seem to have mislaid my copy, but I'm pretty sure it must be
"First public railway - Surrey Iron Railway" by Derek Bayliss. Available
from the Wandle Museum:

http://www.curator.pwp.blueyonder.co...htg/framed.htm
--
Paul Terry

Matthew Church wrote:
"Solar Penguin" wrote in message ...

--- Matthew Church said:

MORE TRIVIA:

WTF has the Croydon Canal got to do with uk.railway ???


IIRC it was filled in and became the trackbed on the line via Forest
Hill and Sydenham.


The track runs along the bottom of the canal, the brickwork and the
old basin form part of an earlier transport system.

If you allow reused infrastructure from older transport forms
incorporated into new ones, then the Higham and Strood tunnels must
count, as they were dug for the Thames & Medway canal in 17xx.

Robin