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The Buxton Line is a railway line in Northern England, connecting Manchester with Buxton in Derbyshire. Passenger services on the line are currently operated by Northern Rail. ==History== It has its origins with the Stockport, Disley and Whaley Bridge Railway, which the LNWR built to connect with the Cromford and High Peak Railway at Whaley Bridge. In 1863, it built an extension from Whaley Bridge, via Chapel en le Frith to Buxton. This forestalled the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway's plans for the area, and also the Midland Railway's attempts to reach Manchester. The latter two railways were forced to combine forces in a line following the LNWR, but north of it, through New Mills (part of what is now known as the Hope Valley Line), branching at Millers Dale. As a result, Buxton, one of the largest towns in the Peak, never achieved main line status. The LNWR had offered the use of the line (at a price, no doubt) but, with its climb through Dove Holes, the Midland did not consider it useful for express trains, saying that it went up a steep hill merely for the sake of going down. The LNWR may have saved costs in construction but it proved difficult to operate, even with the powerful locomotives they had been forced to introduce for their lines north of Manchester. In later days, a seventeen-mile stretch was operated using banking engines, the longest such section on the British railway system. In 1957 there was a serious accident at in which driver John Axon, who died at his post attempting to control a runaway goods train, received the George Cross medal. The Beeching cuts threatened closure but the line was reprieved at a hearing in 1964.〔(Rail Engineer article - Derailed: The complicity dividend )〕 In its 1964 accounts, British Rail counted the cost of the reprieve at £133,000 (£2.4m at 2014 prices)〔(Bank of England inflation calculator )〕 in a full year, plus £44,000 which could have been saved if freight was also withdrawn.〔Modern Railways July 1965 p. 373 The BRB's annual report and accounts - BR deficit cut by £13m in 1964〕 The line was electrified, at 25 kV AC overhead, between Manchester and Hazel Grove in 1981. Colour light signalling, controlled from LNWR built boxes at Edgeley Junction and Hazel Grove, covers the line as far as Norbury crossing, which itself has a small hut controlling two semaphore signals in the Middlewood area. Farther south, signalling is mostly semaphore and is controlled from boxes at , Chapel-en-le-Frith and Buxton. 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「Buxton Line」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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