Cemetery Railway Line
As the Brookwood site had been intentionally chosen for its distance from London, at the time of its opening the only practical way to reach the cemetery was by railway. William Cubitt decided that the terrain of the initial cemetery site was best suited to a railway branch from the LSWR at the west of the cemetery, and work began on the earthworks and rails for the new branch in early September 1854. The single-track branch was completed in time for the opening two months later. The junction with the LSWR, known as Necropolis Junction, was west-facing, meaning that trains to and from London were obliged to reverse in and out of the branch to the two stations in the cemetery. The poor quality gravel soil, which had been the initial reason for the site's cheapness and its selection as the site for the cemetery, was poorly suited as a railway trackbed. The rails, and in particular the sleepers, deteriorated rapidly and needed constantly to be replaced.
Read more about this topic: London Necropolis Company
Famous quotes containing the words cemetery, railway and/or line:
“The cemetery isn’t really a place to make a statement.”
—Mary Elizabeth Baker, U.S. cemetery committee head. As quoted in Newsweek magazine, p. 15 (June 13, 1988)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne,
Poets who wrote great poems, one by one,
And spaced by many years, each line an act
Through which few labor, which no men retract.
This passion is the scholar’s heritage,”
—Yvor Winters (1900–1968)