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Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter Find!

This book finds me making a link with the BBC, another partner in the Reading Detectives project. "Smoke over Shap" was created for BBC children's programmes and was first broadcast in six parts as a 4th Dimension serial on Radio 4 in February 1974. Fact and fiction combine in this story of the pioneering days of railway construction and will be enjoyed not just by young railway enthusiasts but by anyone who enjoys a good story.

"Did you say over Shap?" Gerard Gifford wondered if he had heard his employer correctly. In 1843 it seemed impossible that a railway line could ever be constructed to run over the bleak, windswept wastes of Shap Fell. Joseph Locke argued that it could be done, and he set Gerard, his newest engineer, the challenge of proving it.

The dangers of Shap were brought vividly home to Gerard when the stage coach taking him to Kendal was wrecked in a February blizzard. Yet this proved to be a happy accident, for it led him to the vicarage at Elmden where Bella lived. Parson Linwood and his daughter were to prove staunch allies to Gerard in the troubled times ahead.

For the local people were bitterly divided over the railway. Some of them were ready to do anything, legal or illegal, to prevent the line going through. Accidents were a natural hazzard to building railways, and although Gerard suspected sabotage, proving it was almost impossible. Yet soon it was clear that Gerard and his men had far more than natural obstacles to contend with.

                                                       Joseph Locke

So that is the outline of the story and although the characters of Gerard, Bella, Parson Linwood and Ralph Rawlings are all fictious, as are the events in which they take part, the actual dates and technical information are as accurate as possible. More than a century ago navvies, using nothing but picks and shovels, built the seventy miles of the Lancaster to Carlisle Railway in just under two and a half years, at a cost of £1,200,000. In 1838 the quickest way to get from London to Glasgow was by train to Liverpool, then by boat to Ardrossan - a fourteen hour sea journey - and finally another train to Glasgow. But by 1840 the railway had leapfrogged forward as far as Lancaster. The next leap, however, was to prove the most difficult. Between Lancaster and Carlisle lay the mountains and fells, the rivers and valleys of Cumberland. The two top railway engineers of the day, George Stephenson and Joseph Locke, had very different ideas as to the route the line should take. In the end Joseph Locke's plan to take it up and over Shap Fell was adopted. He gave the contract for the work to Thomas Brassey - the "king" of the railway contractors, and it was the beginning of a partnership which was to take them all over the worl, building railways. Brassey employed a total of 10,000 navvies, English, Irish and Scots, on the Lancaster to Carlisle Railway, and "Smoke over Shap" is the story of the navvies and their impact on the lives of those who came into contact with them and also their impact on the landscape.

                                                             Shap Summit

12 October 2009 from Mary Rossall

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