The Clifton Rocks Railway was an underground

funicular railway A funicular (, , ) is a type of cable railway system that connects points along a railway track laid on a steep slope. The system is characterized by two counterbalanced carriages (also called cars or trains) permanently attached to opposite en ...

in Bristol, England, linking

Clifton Clifton may refer to: People * Clifton (surname) * Clifton (given name) Places Australia *Clifton, Queensland, a town ** Shire of Clifton *Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong * Clifton, Western Australia Canada * Clifton, Nova Sc ...

at the top to

Hotwells Hotwells is a district of the English port city of Bristol. It is located to the south of and below the high ground of Clifton, and directly to the north of the Floating Harbour. The southern entrance to the Avon Gorge, which connects the dock ...

and

Bristol Harbour Bristol Harbour is the harbour in the city of Bristol, England. The harbour covers an area of . It is the former natural tidal river Avon through the city but was made into its current form in 1809 when the tide was prevented from going out per ...

at the bottom of the

Avon Gorge The Avon Gorge () is a 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometre) long gorge on the River Avon in Bristol, England. The gorge runs south to north through a limestone ridge west of Bristol city centre, and about 3 miles (5 km) from the mouth of the ...

in a tunnel cut through the limestone cliffs. The upper station is close to Brunel's famous

Clifton Suspension Bridge The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Avon Gorge and the River Avon, linking Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods in North Somerset. Since opening in 1864, it has been a toll bridge, the income from which provid ...

and is located adjacent to the former Grand Spa Hotel (now the Avon Gorge Hotel). The lower station was opposite the

paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine that drives paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, where the first uses wer ...

landing ferries in Hotwells,

Hotwells railway station Hotwells railway station, was a railway station situated in the suburb of Hotwells in Bristol, England. It was the original southern terminus of the Bristol Port Railway and Pier which ran to a station and pier at Avonmouth. The station opened ...

of the

Bristol Port Railway and Pier The Bristol Port Railway and Pier (occasionally referred to as the Bristol Port and Pier Railway) was a railway in Bristol, England. Route The Bristol Port Railway and Pier company (BPRP) ran from a main terminus at (originally called Clifton), ...

, a terminus of

Bristol Tramways Bristol Tramways operated in the city of Bristol, England from 1875, when the Bristol Tramways Company was formed by Sir George White, until 1941 when a Luftwaffe bomb destroyed the main power supply cables. History The first trams in Brist ...

and the Rownham ferry enabling connections across the river Avon.

History

Construction of the railway was funded by the publisher

George Newnes Sir George Newnes, 1st Baronet (13 March 1851 – 9 June 1910) was a British publisher and editor and a founding figure in popular journalism. Newnes also served as a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for two decades. His company, George Newne ...

, also proprietor of the

Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway The Lynton and Lynmouth Cliff Railway is a water-powered funicular railway joining the twin towns of Lynton and Lynmouth on the rugged coast of North Devon in southwest England. Lynton and Lynmouth are separated by a high cliff, making it har ...

, and as at Lynton and Lynmouth the engineer was George Croydon Marks. Construction of the line started in March 1891. The wide tunnel was bored through the limestone cliffs using both machine-drills and hand-drills and then lined with bricks. It took two years to construct and cost £30,000 ()three times its original estimate. Propulsion was by the water-balance method, in which the cars of each pair were connected by a cable running around a pulley at the upper station; a large tank on each car was filled with water at the top and the extra weight provided the motive power. The railway opened on 11 March 1893 and carried 6,220 passengers on the opening day, and 427,492 in the first year of operation. After this strong start, passenger numbers steadily declined until 1908, when the company was declared bankrupt. In 1912 it was sold to

, for £1,500 (). In 1922 Hotwell Road was enlarged as a fast road called Portway, eliminating the tram to Bristol and the Bristol Port and Pier Railway

near the bottom of the Cliff Railway. The changes caused passenger numbers to drop sharply, and the last train ran on 29 September 1934. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

blast walls were installed in the tunnel, which was used as offices by

BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was the British state-owned airline created in 1939 by the merger of Imperial Airways and British Airways Ltd. It continued operating overseas services throughout World War II. After the pa ...

, as a relay station by the BBC, who also constructed seven emergency studios there, and as an

air-raid shelter Air raid shelters are structures for the protection of non-combatants as well as combatants against enemy attacks from the air. They are similar to bunkers in many regards, although they are not designed to defend against ground attack (but many ...

for local residents. The BBC continued to use parts of the tunnel until 1960.

Operations

The railway was long, and rose at a

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

of about 1 in 2.2 (45%). There were four cars in two connected pairs, essentially forming two parallel funicular railways, one being for exclusively first class passengers; the journey took just 40 seconds. The gauge of the tracks has reported as being between and with two other sources giving the gauge as and . The system operated by gravity. At the upper station, water was fed from a reservoir into the tank underneath the car. The extra weight of this water was enough to pull a loaded car up from the lower station. When the car with its water ballast reached the lower station, the water was discharged into another reservoir, from where it was pumped back up to the upper reservoir to restart the cycle. The pumps were originally powered by a pair of

Otto engine The Otto engine was a large stationary single-cylinder internal combustion four-stroke engine designed by the German Nicolaus Otto. It was a low-RPM machine, and only fired every other stroke due to the Otto cycle, also designed by Otto. Typ ...

s at the bottom of the tunnel.

Preservation

A voluntary group, which in 2008 became a charitable trust, aims to preserve and restore the railway and wartime structures. It is not feasible or desirable to get the railway to run again due to the war-time structures sitting on the railway lines. The cost of complete restoration is estimated at around £15 million. In 2019 a proposal to turn the top section into a museum was announced.

References

External links

Clifton Rocks Railway websiteClifton Rocks RailwayWorld War II BBC Studios
clip by BBC ''Points West'' {{coord, 51, 27, 14.4, N, 2, 37, 31.7, W, type:railwaystation_region:GB_scale:2000, display=title Funicular railways in the United Kingdom Underground funiculars Underground railways in the United Kingdom History of Bristol Rail transport in Bristol Bristol Harbourside Railway lines opened in 1893 Railway companies disestablished in 1934 Works by George Croydon Marks Defunct funicular railways 3 ft 2 in gauge railways in England Clifton, Bristol Water-powered funicular railways

History

Operations

Preservation

See also

References

External links