The winding engine house for the Moddleton incline is on the left with the boiler house behind it. Safety catch points can be seen in the foreground and the pointsman's cabin is on the right with a signal beside it. By the time of the ' Beeching Era', trade from local limestone quarries was decreasing and another section of line closed in 1963, this being the Middleton incline.

Sheep PastureIncorporating the Cromford incline. Stationery engine. Gradient 1 in 8½, 1,320 yards long. But the freight business blossomed and efficiency gains were sought. Cromford and Sheep Pasture Inclines were amalgamated to form a ¾ mile long plane with a gradient of 1 in 8. Hopton Incline entered the record books in 1887 when the stationary engine was withdrawn and, at 1 in 14, it became the steepest section of railway worked, without assistance, by conventional locomotives. And in 1892, with the London and North Western Railway now in charge, the line was diverted via a two-mile route into Buxton, rendering the original northern section – and its inclines – largely redundant. Cromford lies in the parish of Wirksworth in the County of Derby and Whaley Bridge lay in the County Palatine of Chester but today, as a result of boundary changes, it is in the County of Derby. But Josias Jessop discarded his engineering manual as he fashioned plans for a link between the Cromford Canal, built by his father William, and the Peak Forest, a creation of Benjamin Outram. These two waterways served the industrial engine rooms of Lancashire and the East Midlands. Connecting them would speed the flow of Derbyshire coal and open up markets for cotton, minerals and other sundry goods.The application of the Locomotive Engine to the purposes of Railway transit has been so successful, and become so universal, as fully to establish its superiority over every other mode Towards the Whaley Bridge end of the line, another profusion of sidings lay between Dowlow Halt and Ladmanlow, mostly serving quarries and limeworks. This included some dozen sidings in the short section between Harpur Hill and Old Harpur. The gradient is 1 in 8½; and the train is let down two wagons at a time by a coiled wire rope from a stationary engine. You must be quite prepared to hazard the risk of the run down. Sometimes a wagon does break loose, and it will not stop to be reasoned with, but goes to swift destruction. Ride across the buffer my friend, and be prepared to jump off at once if anything gives way. The heyday of this line was in the 1930s when it was extensively used by ramblers because of its proximity to Dovedale. For a time, there was also a through service between London (Euston) and

The scenery, truth to tell, has not been specially attractive during the last few miles. There has been none of these poetic vignettes and glowing wood, that make the ride in a Midland carriage from Derby to Marple such a rich railway romance. Rather a monotonous table-land where niggard fields and stubborn heath are ruled off with bleak stone-walls, and the perspective is unbroken save here and there by a clump of storm-rent ragged pines. A pinion was fastened to the bottom end of this shaft, which meshed with a larger gear wheel. A pulley was fastened to the same shaft as the larger gear wheel and the endless chain from the plane was passed around this. The High Peak Trail is a 17.5-mile trail from High Peak Junction, near Cromford to Dowlow near Buxton. If the concept was sound, the reality proved daunting. Towering a thousand feet above the southern trans-shipment point at Cromford Wharf was the limestone barrier of the High Peak. With a canal across the moors impractical, an early ‘iron railway’ was proposed which, to reach its northern terminus at Whaley Bridge, would have to climb the hill and then descend it.It was a spiral of decline. Sheep Pasture Incline closed temporarily whilst a new electric engine was installed. “It was a white elephant” according to Hubert. “Traffic from the quarries was diverted down to Wirksworth by lorries and taken to Derby on trip trains. They’d found a cheaper way of doing things and the High Peak Railway had had it!”

This Is Ladmanlow,” ventures the driver, shutting off the steam. The information anticipates my query, for there are no name boards on any of the stations to indicate your whereabouts. The stations, indeed, are but sheds; but they sometimes seem to be the only erections within miles of anywhere. We seem to be moving along the top of the world; there are deep hollows in the hills below; and every variety of peak and rounded knoll. The journey is a scamper across savage and solitary moors. The heather grows to the verge of the line. The rarifled air blows about you like a fresh sea breeze. The boiler is of the ordinary tubular construction, and presents no novelty except that of being made wholly of wrought iron, tubes included. The engine differs in some respects from others near Wirksworth. This 18-inch gauge railway was built in 1985 on part of the former Killer's Branch to Middleton Quarry from Steeple House Junction on the Cromford and High Peak Railway.The Peak District of Derbyshire has always posed problems for travel, but from 1800 when the Peak Forest Canal was built, an alternative to the long route through the Trent and Mersey Canal was sought, not only for minerals and finished goods to Manchester, but raw cotton for the East Midlands textile industry.

June 16th. At the meeting Samuel Oldknow was the Chairman and eighteen (named) persons attended including William Jessop. As no person attended from Macclesfield the branch to that town was dropped from the proposal. There is not even the stumpy church tower to be seen mixed up in trees, and rising above grey old gabled farm buildings, at these High Peak out-of-the-world stations. All this I candidly concede, my dear Madam, is very dry and uninteresting, and I apologise for having been so tediously technical. The only extenuation I can urge is that the High Peak Railway is in itself a solid fact of such dimensions that a discursive description of it should also be ‘ballasted’ with facts and figures, data and detail, to carry even my special light locomotive safely. John Bell, one of the platelayers, wanted to look his best for the sermons on Sunday and asked the ganger to cut his hair, a service which he often provided in one of the wagons. An appointment was made for Friday. At the end of the shift, men used to ride up the incline on the last wagon – saving a hard walk – and half way through his trim the stationary engine driver rang down to say the final run was ready to go. Hubert witnessed the scene. “The ganger got up with old John Bell still in the chair – he’d only cut one side. ‘What about my hair?’ he said. ‘I’ll finish it on Monday! I’m not missing a ride up for the sake of the sermons.’” North London tank engine 27505 sits at Cromford Goods by the weighbridge.

Great Views and Harboro Rocks

This is now a national route of the National Cycle Network as well as being popular with walkers and horse riders. Part of the trail is also designated as a section of the Pennine Bridleway. We have already alluded to the difficulties grappled with; the acuteness of the curves, and the equally formidable one of the weakness of the rails, being cast-iron, calculated only for weights not exceeding