Version 2 The Leicester and Swannington Railway
One of the earliest steam railways in the world
An image representing July 17th 1832. A celebration for the opening of the railway from Leicester to Bagworth. The railway provided passenger and freight services. Its main purpose; to transport coal from the burgeoning Leicestershire coalfield.
The Bagworth incline...
Walk down Park Lane, by the Bagworth allotments, cross the railway bridge and turn right down the obvious footpath. You are standing at the top of the Bagworth incline; the original course of the railway. The railway was rerouted to its current path in xxxx.
... and the Roundhouse
Continue your walk for a short distance and obvious pile of rubble on the left is all that remains of the Bagworth Winding House known as the Round House. Here heavy ropes looped around a pulley to allow gravity, and the heavily laden trucks, to pull the empty trucks back up the incline.
A Rerouting
The use of the incline was never fully satisfactory and in 1848 the line was rerouted with gradient minimised by embankments and road bridges to its present path.
A close encounter
The colliery sidings left the main railway close to Bagworth and Ellistown Station at the end of Railway Terrace, crossing Station Road near to the allotment gates.
Locomotives
The first locomotives, Comet and Phoenix, were primitive steam engines which lacked the power to climb the incline without assistance