Opened in 1834, the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway, which now forms the greater part of the Camel Trail, was Cornwall's first locomotive-worked railway and was only the third in the world after the Stockton & Darlington and the Liverpool & Manchester Railways. The B&W was built to carry sea sand inland from the estuary of the River Camel to the inland farms. Sea sand is rich in lime and was a vital fertiliser for the acid soils of the uplands. The main line of the railway ran from Wadebridge to Wenford Bridge on the lower slopes of Bodmin Moor, with branches into Bodmin and up to Ruthern Bridge.
The line remained unconnected to the outside railway system for many years, but in 1846 it was bought (illegally) by the London & South Western Railway (LSWR), which was gradually extending west but its nearest line was still nearly 200 miles away. The LSWR finally opened its North Cornwall line from Okehampton to Wadebridge in 1895, thus joining its remote Cornish offshoot to the rest of its network. In the meantime the Great Western Railway had built a connecting line to Boscarne Junction, outside Bodmin. In 1899 the LSWR extended the line from Wadebridge to Padstow.
Passenger trains ran from Bodmin North to Wadebridge and Padstow, and others ran in from the North Cornwall line, starting at either Okehampton, Exeter, and even London Waterloo. The Great Western also ran trains through from the main line at Bodmin Road to Wadebridge. The lines to Wenford Bridge and Ruthern Bridge were only ever used by freight trains. The traffic in sea sand declined as more modern fertilisers were developed, but china clay, granite, and in-bound coal took its place on the Wenford Bridge branch. A privately-owned tramway ran from the Wenford Bridge terminus up a cable-worked incline to the De Lank Granite Quarries on the moor.
The line as built included some very sharp curves. Those on the line between Bodmin and Wadebridge were eased in the 1880s to allow more modern locomotives to be used (the long-bypassed original course of the line can still be seen at Grogley), but it wasn't thought worthwhile to do so on the other lines. Because of this there were severe restrictions on the size and weight of engines that could be used on the branches, so three redundant locomotives from the London suburbs were sent down to Cornwall in the 1890s and survived there for another 60 years. Dating from 1874 these quaint relics of the Victorian era, known as the Beattie well tanks, became highly popular with railway enthusiasts, and when their working life finally came to an end in 1962 two of the three escaped the scrap man and were preserved.
The first part of the B&WR to go was the Ruthern Bridge line. After the closure in 1912 of the main tin mine in the area, the line gradually declined in use until it was closed in 1933, just missing its centenary. The next casualties were both at the Wenford Bridge end of the line.
Passenger trains to Wadebridge from the North Cornwall line ceased in October 1966. The line between Bodmin Road and Padstow lasted only a few months longer, closing in January 1967. A month later the short final section of the Wenford Bridge branch beyond the clay dries also succumbed, although the local coal merchant continued to operate from the rail-less terminus site for another 35 years! Freight trains continued to run to Wadebridge until the end of 1978, but after that only the china clay trains to Wenford Bridge remained and they came to an end in 1983. Major investment would have been needed to allow modern high capacity wagons to be used on the line and, in any case, the clay dries at Wenford Bridge faced an uncertain future.
Following the closure of the Wadebridge to Padstow line, Cornwall County Council acquired the trackbed of the line and opened it in 1980 as a footpath. The following year it was opened to cyclists and horse riders on an experimental basis. As further sections of the old line were closed and the tracks lifted the path, now called the Camel Trail, was extended eastwards, so that it now runs all the way from the clay dries near Wenford Bridge and from the Bodmin North station through Wadebridge to Padstow.
However, trains have not entirely vanished from the area. The old Great Western line linking Boscarne Junction to the main line at Bodmin Road (now Bodmin Parkway) has been saved by the Bodmin & Wenford Railway and is operated with vintage steam and diesel services from its base at the old Bodmin General station. A scheme to reopen the Wenford Bridge line for china clay traffic received Government authorisation in 1996, but objections from a small but vociferous group of local residents led to it being overruled by the courts. Apparently they preferred to have lorries running round the area's narrow lanes than one daily train!
Not that this has deterred the railway. It is now working on a scheme to restore the railway to Wadebridge and possibly even Padstow, running parallel to the Camel Trail.
A book The Bodmin and Wenford Railway by John Stretton looks at the route of the railway from Bodmin to Wadebridge and Padstow, comparing photographs of the past with the present day scene.
Updated: 22 August 2003