A RAILWAY IN BARBADOS AGAIN
BARBADOS’ first female Prime Minister, the Honourable Mia Amor Mottley, opened a rebuilt railway on the island on March 11.
The new line is the brainchild of local businessman Larry Warren and his son Simon, who own the historic St Nicholas Abbey estate, a major tourist attraction visited by more than 35,000 people annually.
The first legislation for the construction of a railway in Barbados was passed in July 1846, although the proposed line from the capital of Bridgetown to Speightstown, on the west coast, was never actually built. In 1873 a new proposal for a line from Bridgetown to Belleplaine (St Andrews) was put forward, and an engineering assessment of the new line was made by well-known narrow gauge engineer Robert Fairlie.
Construction of the 1,067mm- (3ft 6in-) gauge line was started in June 1877 by the private Barbados General Railway Company. Construction would cost £200,000 and was undertaken by the British engineering contractors Leathon Earle Ross & Edward Davis Mathews, which were to build 21½ miles of main line plus another 3½ miles of sidings
