Heritage route
Isle of Man Steam Railway
Douglas → Port Erin · Isle of Man
Isle of Man Steam Railway in pictures




Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 25 km
- Fastest time
- 1 h 0 min
- Average speed
- 25 km/h
- Top speed
- 40 km/h
- Operator
- Isle of Man Transport
- Train
- Beyer Peacock 2-4-0T steam
- Countries
- Isle of Man
- In service since
- 1874
- Runs
- up to 7 return trips daily (Mar–Nov)
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
Victorian Beyer Peacock tanks of 1874 still haul their original carriages down 25 km of 3 ft gauge to the island’s southern tip.
The Isle of Man Railway once webbed the whole island; what survives is the 1874 Port Erin line, still worked by its original Beyer Peacock tank engines and wooden carriages. From the Douglas seafront the 3 ft gauge tracks roll through glens and fuchsia hedgerows to Castletown, the island’s ancient capital, and on to the beach at Port Erin. It is government-run rather than a volunteer heritage line: simply a Victorian railway that never stopped.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 148241 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 4 m from it
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Douglas terminus
- Port Soderick glen
- Santon farmland
- Castletown & Castle Rushen
- Port St Mary bay
- Port Erin beach
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