Sodor & Mainland Railway
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The Sodor & Mainland Railway was a fictional railway that existed on the equally fictional Island of Sodor in the The Railway Series books written by the Rev. W Awdry. The railway line was supposedly built when railway-mania was still in force and was opened in 1853. The initial aim of the railway was to link Sodor with the British Mainland.
The Sodor & Mainland Railway ran from the docks at Kirkronan to the town of Ballahoo via Rolf's Castle and Crovan's Gate, but never actually reached the mainland due to lack of money and misfortunes. The plan to tunnel to the Mainland failed when early excavations collapsed, and a scheme to build a bridge across the Walney Channel was halted by the Admiralty.
Many of its staff originally came from Ireland or Scotland. It provided passenger services, but was primarily intended to be a goods line. Although plans were put in action to start a steamer ferry service from Kirkronan to Dublin but nothing much came of it.
In the books it is known as the S&M, and we see only one of its engines: a box tank engine called Neil.
Neil is based around the early shunting engines seen in the 1860's around Northern England, and he makes friends with Skarloey when shunting him up the line to the newly-opened Skarloey Railway. It is unknown what other engines worked for the railway, but we must assume that all were very similar to Neil. As for Neil, it is very likely that he was scrapped after found to be underpowered and unable to cope with the heavier workloads.
The Sodor & Mainland Railway's finances collapsed in 1910 and finally the company amalgamated with other small railways in 1914 on the island to form The North Western Railway (NWR), now under the direction of its CEO, Sir Topham Hatt, better known as The Fat Controller.
The S&M's dreams of a link between Sodor and the Mainland did eventually come to pass under the reign of Sir Topham Hatt, who constructed a rail bridge across the Walney Channel.
Only a small part of the S&M became part of the NWR mainline namely the section between Kellsthorpe Road and a point just east of Crovan's Gate. Ballahoo was bypassed by the main line and became a junction for 2 branch lines.
The S&M did at one time plan to build a western extension into Sodor's mountain country to connect the expanding industrial town of Peel Godred to the railway network but this plan like the others came to nothing and Peel Godred's first railway was the narrow gauge Mid Sodor Railway line and then later still the NWR's Electric Peel Godred branch.
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