From the Ribblehead Viaduct the railway line heads north through Blea Moor Tunnel, over Mallerstang Common and up to Ais Gill Summit, the highest point of the line. This region is wild, desolate and windswept and access by road is problematic. Hence it isn't always possible to take photographs of much of the major engineering work when you only have an hour or so in a hired car. That is going to have to be for another day or two in the summer with plenty of time. In the meantime you will have to make do with the handful of photos here.

Meanwhile, Liz Ayers and I headed north-east from Ribblehead and after a short drive turned northwards to pick up the railway line after it had emerged from Blea Moor Tunnel.

We hadn't gone too far when we arrived at Dent Head viaduct, and this is really a splendid view. This viaduct of 10 arches is almost 200 yards long and at its highest point is 100 feet above the ground. It was built from "Dent marble" from quarries close by.

In July 1870 the construction of the viaduct was delayed when a waterspout on Blea Moor erupted. This transormed the small stream here into a raging torrent which swept over the works and carried away much of the building material. In a forlorn chase, the workers were always going to finish second and the building material was later recovered from as far as 5 miles away.

Following the discovery of the faults in the waterproofing of the deck of the Ribblehead Viaduct, the waterproofing here was replaced in 1989. There was also a project to give the viaduct further attention but this was put in abeyance due to a moratorium on expenditure following the British financial collapse of late 1992.

Somewhere in the vicinity is another major viaduct, Arten Gill, but apparently this takes some finding and we didn't (unfortunately) have the time to track it down.

Because of the nature of the terrain and the conflicting aims of the company to keep gradients at a minimum while providing a local rail service for the needs of the Dales inhabitants, there were some weird compromises. This is Dent station, which is situated well over three miles away across a valley and 600 feet higher up than the village of 600 people which it serves, famous for its "cobbled streets and colour-washed cottages" according to the BR publicity blurb in August 1968 prepared to entice private buyers to take over the line. In this "Disneyland in the Dales" project, the station was marketed as a potential site for the viewing of upland landscape and land use. It might have made more sense, at least in some people's eyes, to have marketed the small private brewery in the village.

A story, doubtless apocryphal but often quoted, illustrates the isolation perfectly.
An American tourist in Dent asks one of the locals in the village pub "why is it that the railway station is so far away from the village?"
The local pauses for a while, and then replies "they thought it would be a good idea to build it next to the railway line".
But the railway station is not as isolated as all that. Not too far away there is a Youth Hostel conveniently situated for exploring the Dales, and legions of ramblers and other hostellers come by train to Dent as a convenient starting and finishing point for a rambling holiday. Of course, I don't need a holiday - I can quite happily ramble on a computer keyboard. But never mind.

The station is situated at an altitude of 1150 feet making it the highest main-line station in England. The stationmaster's house is even higher and is covered on three sides by slates to keep out the weather. This was one of the first houses in Britain to be double-glazed.

And the weather up here is cruel, especially in winter. There are banks of railway sleepers placed vertically upright to try to keep off the snow. Yet in January 1962 an Edinburgh-London express was lost in the snow and it took 5 days to extricate it and pull it backwards out of the drift. In the wicked winters of 1947 and 1963 the line was also brought to a standstill. In 1947 nothing moved on the rails up here for a good two months and it was estimated that the snowdrifts on the line were almost 40 feet deep.

The station was closed in May 1970 in circumstances that I outline below, and the station house and buildings were sold into private hands. Nevertheless, in the "DalesRail" experiment that began in May 1975, the station was tentatively reopened. In 1986, full rail operation was restored.

Well over a year after my first visit to the Leeds - Settle - Carlisle line, I was on the way from Hexham to Penrith, and found myself passing underneath Langwathby railway station (and NOT Langwathby train station - an Americanism I particularly detest).

This is another one of Sanders' "Derby Gothic" railway stations, and another one on the line that was closed during the shameful episode of May 1970 when, following a Transport Users Consultative Committee ruling that severe hardship would be caused if the line were to close, British Rail complied by keeping the line open - but closed all the stations (except Settle and Appleby).

The station building was sold into private hands and is now a restaurant named after the title of a very famous film starring Trevor Howard, leading many people to believe that the events that took place in the film took place here. But this is nothing but shameless opportunism and profiteering, and in fact the events described in the film took place at Carnforth.

The "Dales Rail" tourist scheme of 1976 saw the station reopen (in ad hoc accommodation) on a trial basis, and one of the plans for Langwathby on a more permanent basis was to make it the centre of a self-guided tourist trail for agriculture and land use in the Eden Valley here as part of the "Disneyland in the Dales" project should the railway be sold to a private buyer.

However, the line was saved in the medium term and the station is now fully active and serves a Carlisle outer commuter belt. The decision to retain the line and improve the infrastructure led to the railway bridge here being replaced in 1989. Another claim to fame for Langwathby station is that it was a stop on the British Rail's crew training on steam trains, when for several weeks a 2-6-4 tank engine 80080 shuttled up and down the line in readiness for a steam chartering project in 1993.

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