Furness Railway

The Furness Railway was incorporated by Act of Parliament, given Royal Assent on 23 May 1844, to carry iron ore and slate from the mines and quarries of the Furness peninsula to wharves at Barrow and Piel Pier for onward shipment by sea. The first section, from Kirkby (Roose Pit) to Dalton-in-Furness and on to Barrow, opened on 11 August 1846.

The principal traffic was haematite iron ore from the mines at Park, Stainton and Lindal. By the 1860s the Furness Railway was hauling more iron ore per route mile than any other British railway. The company invested heavily in the development of Barrow-in-Furness as a planned industrial town and as the export port for the entire iron and steel trade of north Lancashire; James Ramsden, the company's general manager and chairman of its successor steel-making and shipbuilding operations, was effectively the founder of modern Barrow.

The company's main line extended north via Ulverston and the long Leven and Kent estuary viaducts to a junction with the London and North Western Railway at Carnforth, providing access to the principal English north-south route. A northern extension to Whitehaven, jointly worked with the LNWR as the Whitehaven, Cleator and Egremont Railway, gave further access to the iron-ore fields of western Cumberland. The combined system carried freight, summer tourist traffic to the Lake District, and (from 1857) regular passenger services.

The most famous surviving Furness Railway locomotive is the 0-4-0 Coppernob of 1846, built by Bury, Curtis and Kennedy as one of a set of four A2 locomotives at the company's formation, and preserved by the Furness Railway itself after its withdrawal. Coppernob is today in the National Railway Museum at York.

The Furness Railway operated as an independent company until December 1922, when it became one of the constituent companies of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway at the 1923 Grouping. The entire surviving system passed to British Railways in 1948. The historic main line via Barrow continues in passenger service today as the Cumbrian Coast Line.