Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway 1.41

The Campbeltown and Machrihanish Light Railway was a narrow gauge railway in Kintyre, Scotland, between Campbeltown and the coalmining village of Machrihanish. Only three other passenger-carrying lines in the UK operated on the same gauge, all of them in Wales - the Corris Railway, the short-lived Plynlimon and Hafan Tramway and the Talyllyn Railway.HistoryCoal has been mined on the Kintyre peninsula since 1498 or before. Although not of the highest quality, the coal found there was abundant and relatively cheap to extract. In the middle of the eighteenth century the collieries of the area were kept busy supplying the many whisky distilleries in the Campbeltown area.CanalIn 1773 James Watt surveyed a canal to connect the coal mines to Campbeltown to reduce the costs of transportation. The 3mi Campbeltown and Machrihanish Canal was opened in 1794.This early transportation link fell into disuse and had been virtually abandoned by 1856. In 1875, the Argyll Coal and Canal Co. acquired the main colliery and found the canal in a state of disrepair. They decided a better transportation system was required and began to investigate the building of a railway to Campbeltown.