The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway

IF a history were written dealing with the railway enterprise as exhibited in this country during the last decade of the present century, the characteristic features of the years 1897, ’98, and ’99 would undoubtedly be the multiplication of schemes for the provision of light railways. For some years past it has been recognised that light railways constitute one of the most feasible means of benefiting rural districts situated away from the main lines of transit yet devised.

The chief difficulty in the way of providing light railways in the past has been the financial one. Obviously the districts where such lines would be a boon are poor, scantily populated, and devoted almost entirely to agriculture. Local landowners are, in such cases, seldom wealthy, and outside capitalists fight shy of providing the means wherewith to build a line between places they have never so much as heard of. A scheme for a light railway between Little Pudlingtonin-the-Slush and Great Hogwell-in-the-Mire is of vast importance to the enlightened inhabitants of those idyllic spots; alas, it does not appeal so forcibly to the hardheaded man of means with a partiality for a fair return in the way of interest on his investments generally.

The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway is at best a judicious cross between the railway proper and an urban tramway

Wherever there is a thriving manufactory. the rail has come to it or it has gone to the rail. The conveyance of the raw article to the manufactory, and of the finished goods from it, pays the railway company well enough, but the rates for grain, roots, manure, and so forth, are now so