The Ramsey North Branch

The small fenland market town of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire was one of the many which suffered from the agricultural depression of the mid-19th century. With the coming of the railways the town was stranded between the Great Northern Railway and the Eastern Counties Railway. Eventually local business people and landowners promoted their own line, the Ramsey Railway to link up with the GNR at Holme, but their rivals, the GER, bought up the shares to ensure that the branch could not be used to poach traffic for East Anglia onto the GNR. This ensured that the branch carried few passengers and when buses came along in the 1920s even fewer. Passenger services continued until 1947 and freight ceased in 1973. In typical Peter Paye fashion, all aspects of this branch line are examined.