Slamannan Railway
Former railway line in Scotland / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Slamannan Railway was an early mineral railway between the north-eastern margin of Airdrie and Causewayend on the Union Canal, near Linlithgow, Scotland.
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The Slamannan Railway was built to give access for minerals from pits in the Slamannan area to market in Glasgow (over connecting railways) and Edinburgh (over the Union Canal), and it also briefly provided an early passenger connection between Glasgow and Edinburgh in association with other railways and the canal. It had a rope-worked incline at Causewayend.
The line opened on 31 August 1840. It crossed very thinly populated moorland, and it was dependent on promised mineral extraction on its own route, but this proved disappointing, and traffic was limited by the extended route over other railways westward, and transshipment to the canal eastward. It was never successful commercially, and in 1848 it combined with other companies, forming the Monkland Railways.
None of the route is still in use, and much of it near Airdrie has been obliterated by modern open-cast mineral extraction.