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Click for Caradon Railways
 Caradon Hill Railways 
South Caradon Mine Branch
Caradon Railways
Summary of the lines
The LCR
History of the LCR
Ore Traffic from the branch
The Rail office and Tolls
The Rail Bridge
South Caradon Tramway
Dressing floor Tramway
South Caradon Mine
South Caradon Dressing Floors
The LCR through West Caradon 
 		 Click for a view down the valley towards this point 
The remains of the South Caradon Branch Headshunt 2001. 
River seaton to the left with the burrows of West Caradon mine. 
To the right is the site of South Caradon's dressing sheds and miners drys.
 
Click for plan of dressing floors The South Caradon Mine provided the core traffic for the LCR for most of its history and without the Railway the mine's development would have been severely restricted. This interrelationship explains the presence of the LCR trackbed within the dressing floors of the mine. 1844 was the year that the LCR started transporting ore from South Caradon, seven years after the mine has started production. 

The unusual  layout of the lines Within the Seaton valley came about from the historical development of the railways around Caradon Hill. The Original LCR line split at Polwrath depot with one branch following the western slope of the valley up to the Granite quarries at Cheeswring via the Gonamena Incline. South Caradon Mine was served by the lower branch that ran to a siding at Valley floor level. In 1861 the line was extended around the Southern slopes of Caradon Hill to Tokenbury Corner with the siding at South Caradon becoming a headshunt for trains using that branch. The layout changed again in 1877 with the opening of the Kilmar Junction Railway which enabled trains to reach Cheeswring around the Eastern side of the Hill and therefore bypassing the Gonamena incline.  


This Plan is based on OS Maps 1882( Copyright reserve),site visits, interprestions of the photographs in messenger,Notes within that book and the CAU Minions survey.