Snaefell Mountain Railway

Built without statutory powers on land leased by its promoters, the line opened on 20 August 1895 after a very quick construction, on a route first surveyed by George Noble Fell, son of the inventor of the Fell centre-rail system. It climbs five miles from Laxey to the summit at 2,036 feet on 3 ft 6 in gauge track electrified at 550 volts, using the centre rail for braking on the steep grades. The season runs from March to early November, and each winter the overhead wires on the exposed upper section are taken down to save them from ice.

Stations

1. 0 kmLaxey
2. 5 kmBungalow
3. 7 kmSnaefell Summit

The stations OpenStreetMap lists for this service, in order, with the distance along the line as drawn here. A train may skip some of them.

Along the way

• Laxey, beside the Manx Electric
• The Laxey valley
• The Bungalow crossing
• Snaefell summit, the island’s highest point

How this line was checked

• Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 2077581: 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 3 m from it
• Wikipedia has an article for this line

Questions and answers

Read more on Wikipedia ↗