Dock and Harbour Lines
Quays on the Cattewater, on the River Plym on the east side of Plymouth, were first served by the P&DR. A standard gauge connection was later established by the LSWR and this is still open for goods traffic, trains having to reverse in a spur outside the old Friary station.
Sutton Harbour, the old harbour in the centre of the town, was also served by a P&DR line to Coxside, on the north-eastern side of the harbour. With the arrival of the SDR in 1848 this line was taken over by the new company but mixed gauge was retained until 1857 after which it became a broad gauge only line; a short branch to a yard at Sutton Harbour, a little to the west of Coxside, was opened at around the same time.
The LSWR opened a route from Friary station to North Quay on 22 October 1879 and this was connected to the GWR's Sutton Harbour yard on 6 November 1879 and trains of both gauges could shunt the quays. These lines carried on beyond North Quay to Sutton Wharf and Vauxhall Quay; a short piece of this mixed gauge track still survives on this section.
The Plymouth Great Western Docks, like the broad gauge railways, were engineered by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and were connected to Millbay station in 1850. Over the years the network of lines were expanded around all sides of the dock. Ocean Special Mail trains were run direct from the docks to London Paddington; it was one of these in 1904 that saw City of Truro exceed 100 mph (160 km/h).
The LSWR established their own Ocean Terminal on the west side of Stonehouse Pool, reached by a short branch from their Devonport station. Fast passenger trains ran from here to London Waterloo in connection with trans-Atlantic liners.
The naval dockyards at Devonport were connected to the CR at Keyham in 1867. At first these were worked by the CR but the Dockyard built up an extensive locomotive fleet to operate the various yards, including the South Yard which was reached through a tunnel. A free passenger service was operated which had six different classes of accommodation.
Read more about this topic: Railways In Plymouth
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“I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
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