Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unused condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In 1880 my ancestor George White proposed to the Society of Merchant Venturers that he should build a funicular railway on the rock-face of their part of the Clifton Gorge. Had he done so it would undoubtedly have morphed from being a practical nineteenth- century mode of transport into one of Bristol’s best- loved twenty-first century tourist attractions. The views from its cars would have been incomparable the trip from the river to Brunel’s Suspension Bridge breath-taking. As it was the Merchants turned him down and it fell to George Newnes fourteen years later to take up the challenge and build a railway inside the rock rather than on it. This Herculean task was accomplished at great expense and great risk to the workforce. But like so many major engineering projects the huge initial cost made the original company unviable and George White was able to take it over on behalf of his Bristol Tramway and Carriage Company. The BTCC ran the railway successfully for many years. By 1934 road transport had improved access to Clifton to such an extent that the Victorian funicular had ceased to have any useful function. Having served its purpose honourably the steeply sloping tunnel was effectively locked up and abandoned. (MP)