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The Polloc and Govan Railway was an early mineral railway in Scotland, constructed to bring coal and iron from William Dixon's collieries and ironworks to the River Clyde for onward transportation. When the Clydesdale Junction Railway was projected in the nineteenth century, it used part of the alignment of the Polloc line to reach Glasgow from Rutherglen, and that part of the route is in use today as the main access to Glasgow Central station from the Motherwell direction. ==History: the Govan Waggonway== In the middle of the eighteenth century, a Tyneside industrialist, John Dixon, set up in business in the west of Scotland, and some time after 1750 he built a waggonway to bring coal from coalpits he owned at Gartnavel and Knightswood to the River Clyde, for onward transport to his glassworks at Dumbarton. Between 1775 and 1778, his son William Dixon built a line from Govan coal pits to Springfield on the south bank of the Clyde. At that time "Govan" extended to the south-east of the city; the coal pits were in the area bounded by the present-day M74, Polmadie Road and Aikenhead Road. "Springfield" was a quay on the south bank of the Clyde, immediately west of West Street, although Wherry Wharf was the actual quay used. The alignment of the waggonway was broadly south-east to north-west, skirting round the south of the built up area of the time, and the approach to the Clyde was along what became West Street. Privately built and not requiring Parliamentary authority, this became known as the ''Govan Waggonway''. Dixon built it on the principle familiar to him from Tyneside, with timber cross-sleepers and timber rails, and wagons with flanged wheels were pulled by horses.〔M J T Lewis, ''Early Wooden Railways'', T & A Constable Limited, Edinburgh, 1974, ISBN 0 7100 7818 8, pages 133 and 167〕〔Bertram Baxter, ''Stone Blocks and Iron Rails'', David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1966, page 228〕 In 1810 the Glasgow, Paisley and Johnstone Canal was nearing completion, with its Glasgow termination at Port Eglinton; this faced the west side of Eglinton Street immediately south of, and opposite, the Cumberland Street junction; the area is long since built over. According to Paterson (page 207), "On 1 August 1811, William Dixon (Junior), coalmaster, bought 1,242 square yards of ground from the Corporation of Glasgow of building a tramway on which to convey coal from his Govan pits to the Ardrossan Canal basin at Port Eglinton."〔John Thomas revised Alan J S Paterson, ''A Regional History of the Railways of Great Britain: Volume 6, Scotland, the Lowlands and the Borders'', David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1984, ISBN 0 946537 12 7〕 The main line of the waggonway was of course already long established, and this must refer to Dixon's intention to build a short connecting branch to the canal basin. 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「Polloc and Govan Railway」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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