Cornwall Railway

At the time of the accession of Victoria to the throne in 1837, Falmouth (with Penryn) was the largest population centre in Cornwall, at 12,000. It had been an important victualling station for merchant shipping during the Napoleonic Wars, but Southampton was increasingly favoured for the continuing packet traffic, due to its more convenient road and coastal shipping connection to London. Although official assurances had been given about the retention of certain traffics, the construction of the London and Southampton Railway, seriously proposed in 1830 and completed in 1840, alarmed interested businessmen in Falmouth, and it was generally agreed that a railway connection to London was urgently needed.

Early proposals, in 1835 and 1836, for the railway favoured a route broadly following the Old Road through Launceston and Okehampton, and on to Basingstoke or Reading. This huge undertaking failed for lack of funds, but it established the presumption that the part of this route west of Exeter, the Central Route, was the natural choice, and that the coastal route was not. The Central Route had the principal advantage of providing the shortest route to London, as the object was to secure the packet traffic. The intermediate terrain was largely unpopulated; the route traversed high altitudes, but the topography was easier than a route following the south coast because of the multiple valleys and river inlets near the coast.

Later proposals were put forward, now reduced to joining the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) near Exeter; it was very gradually extending westward, but these proposals all failed for lack of financial support. Nonetheless a Committee to form a Cornwall Railway had been formed and Captain William Moorsom had prepared detailed plans for a route.

Controversy

At first the promoters wanted the most direct route to London, even if that meant building a line all the way there, bypassing important towns in Cornwall and Devon. Before the interested parties could raise the money and get parliamentary authority for their line, the Government actually removed the bulk of the packet trade to Southampton, so that most of the income for any new line was removed. Some interests continued to press for the best line to London, hoping that the packet trade would return; if necessary they would link with another new railway, but the huge cost of this proved impossible to raise.

A more practical scheme running to Plymouth gradually took priority and, at first, the trains were to cross the Hamoaze, the body of water at the mouth of the River Tamar on a steam ferry. This was shown to be unrealistic, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel was called in to resolve the difficulty. He designed the bridge over the River Tamar at Saltash, the Royal Albert Bridge: when it was built it was the most prodigious engineering feat in the world. He also improved the details of the route elsewhere. By reaching Plymouth, the company could connect with the South Devon Railway and on to London over the Bristol and Exeter railway and the Great Western Railway. The line was built on the broad gauge.

Deprived of the lucrative packet trade, the promoters now discovered that it was impossible to raise the money needed to build the line, and there was considerable delay until the economy of the country improved. The object of linking Falmouth to London was quietly dropped, and the line was built from Truro to Plymouth. At Truro another railway, the West Cornwall Railway, fed in, linking Penzance to the network. Falmouth was much later connected too, but only by a branch line.