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The Culdee Fell Railway (CFR) is a fictional narrow gauge rack and pinion railway appearing in the book ''Mountain Engines'' written by the Rev. W. Awdry. The stories are based on incidents in the history of the Snowdon Mountain Railway. Awdry visited the Snowdon Mountain Railway (SMR) with his friend, the Rev. Teddy Boston, in early 1963. That summer he wrote a 2-part article about it in his series "Remarkable Railways", for the ''Church of England Newspaper''. The Director of the SMR at the time, A.O.E. Davis, suggested that Awdry might like to include a similar railway on Sodor. Fortunately, a suitable mountain was already marked on the first published maps of Sodor, the 2046 ft-high ''Culdee Fell''. In the book, the Culdee Fell Railway runs from Kirk Machan, where it meets the standard gauge line from Killdane to Peel Godred, to the summit of Culdee Fell. Devil's Back is a high exposed ridge which the railway runs along, corresponding to Clogwyn of the real Snowdon Mountain Railway. == History == According to "research" by the Rev. W Awdry, the railway was the brainchild of the tourist-minded Mid Sodor Railway, who had hopes to extend their line beyond Peel Godred to Kirk Machan at the foot of Culdee Fell, where passengers could board a rack railway to the summit. Initial attempts to establish a company however were thwarted by Lord Peter Barrane, the local landowner – this gave the Skarloey Railway an opportunity to capitalize by running horse-and-trap services from their terminus to a point half-way up the mountain, allowing a shorter and quicker climb. When the situation began to drain tourist monies away from the central portion of the island, local opinion was able to force Lord Barrane's hand. This resulted in the formation of the Culdee Fell Tramroad and Hotel Company Ltd. Lord Barrane was established as company chairman and was able to have the proposed route modified to skirt his properties on the lower slopes of the mountain, hence the large loop the route takes from Kirk Machan to Skarloey Road, when the original plan was to head straight up the hillside. The Snowdon Mountain Railway had opened only a little earlier, and they provided advice and construction expertise. It is therefore no surprise that the 2 lines are similar in many respects – for example, both use the Abt rack system and have a track gauge (common to other mountain railways) of . However, the CFR is twice the length, with shallower gradients at the base, and a much harder final climb to the summit. Construction started in 1897; the line was inspected in March 1900 and opened to the public on Whit Monday, but after just a month one of the locomotives was destroyed when it derailed and fell down a cliff – the exact cause was never determined, but is believed to have been a stone lodged between the rack rails. The line remained closed until the following season (Easter Monday 1901) whilst improvements were made. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Culdee Fell Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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