Newlyn Downs Branch Line

The Great Western Railway (GWR) had secured dominance in south and west Cornwall from its purchase of the Cornwall Railway in 1889; it already had control of the West Cornwall Railway and therefore had a main line from London through Plymouth to Penzance, with a number of branches. It had been working the nominally independent Cornwall Minerals Railway lines, in particular the passenger route from Par to Newquay, for some years and in 1896 it acquired that network by purchase. In the 1890s the rival London and South Western Railway (LSWR) was extending its network in north Cornwall, through the North Cornwall Railway, which was building from Launceston to Padstow: it reached Wadebridge in…