← Browse Princetown · Browse Industrial Archaeology · Browse the directory
Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway
Princetown, Devon
Grid ref: SX 5542 7384 Find this on the Map Reference Finder
The Plymouth & Dartmoor Railway (P&DR) was a horse-drawn tramway conceived by Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt to connect the Foggintor and King's Tor quarries to the port of Plymouth. It received Royal Assent in July 1819 and opened on 26 September 1823, running around 25 miles to a wharf at Crabtree, built to an unusual 4ft 6in gauge and worked by independent horse-drawn wagons paying a toll to the company. Granite was its main traffic, alongside lime, sea sand, coal, timber and peat.
The line's finances were shaky almost from the start. Its major quarry tenants, the firm of Johnson & Brice, lent the near-bankrupt company money to complete the route into Princetown, in exchange for free carriage of their own granite, an arrangement later blamed for undermining the railway's income. The upper section above Yelverton was taken over from 1883 by the steam-worked, standard-gauge Princetown Railway, built partly along the same trackbed. A stone bridge carrying the line near King's Tor still stands today.
Suggest an edit to this listing
Contact us if you have information about this listing
Go deeper with Dartefacts
Dartefacts is a database of Dartmoor sites with far more close-up detail than we can show here, and it is the best place to go deeper. Dartefacts is free to use, and nobody has to pay to look things up. If you want more, a yearly subscription adds 10-figure grid references, map zoom down to 1:25,000 and lists to tick off the places you have visited, and it helps keep the site going. We would encourage you to subscribe.
More Dartmoor resources
Thoughts
Be the first to share a thought about Plymouth and Dartmoor Railway.
Share a thought
View from Great Links Tor. Photograph by Glavind Strachan Photography“A lonely, desolate spot, forsaken even by the cattle and wild ponies of the forest, but yet affording a far off glimpse of the cultivated world beyond those hills which form a barrier to the north.”
Also on Our DartmoorKennon Hill — A flat-topped hill with a small cairn, offering dramatic views west towards High Willhays and the heart of Dartmoor.
Know another Dartmoor place, tor or landmark we should include? Suggest a listing, it is free.
Suggest a listing