Think of Jamaica, and railways probably aren’t the first thing that springs to mind. Tourism probably tops the list, and an initiative is under way - the Jamaica Community Rail Project (JCRP) - to transform a derelict station and rail line into a tourist attraction.
Construction work on the Caribbean island’s first railway infrastructure began just 20 years after that for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, with services on the Western Jamaica Connecting Railway beginning in 1845.
Initially, the line ran from Kingston to Spanish Town and was just 14½ miles long. In 1879, the privately owned railway was sold to the government, which funded the line’s extension to several other towns, before selling it on to the West Indian Railway Improvement Company.
The lines and services continued to be gradually extended, albeit in a limited way, linking more towns. But there was relatively little change over the following decades, other than the arrival of diesel trains in 1938.
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Read this article in full in RAIL issue 983
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