HOW the railways were developed and worked over a period of 150 years will be explored in a day of talks being organised by the Cumbrian Railways Association.
The 41-year-old group for railway historians and enthusiasts has 450 members and is holding its spring meeting at Carus Green Golf Club, on Burneside Road, Kendal, on March 18.
Dick Smith starts the day with a talk called The Isolation of the Windermere Line.
This will look at how Windermere could have become a junction station rather than remaining a terminus at the end of the line.
Bryan Parker will look at some of the technicalities of running a busy railway station safely in his talk on the operation of the Carlisle Power Signal Box from 1985 to 2017.
The talks day ends with a talk called A Horrible History of Cumbrian Railways, presented by Evening Mail Memories Page writer Bill Myers.
It will look and rail deaths, crashes and the wide range of criminals taking advantage of the county's railways stretching back to at least 1836.
Most - but not all - of the track deaths were fair from spectacular affairs - the result of busy, or careless, people taking risks.
More unusual aspects of the talk include the Barrow man jailed for stealling railway coal worth pennies and the Lakeland carriages which came under attack by catapult.
For more details about the spring meeting and the activities of the association, you can check its website at http://cumbrianrailways.org.uk
Among research projects underaken by the Cumbrian Railways Association is a database of the county's former railway workers.
Most of the work was undertaken by the association's late president, Peter Robinson, from Grange.
It has around 28,000 entries and is very useful for family historians looking for their railway ancestors.
The details were found by searching through company minutes, employment records, accident reports and staff magazines.
It can be found at http://cumbrianrailways.org.uk/geneaology.html
The association also publishes a journal for members called Cumbrian Railways.
The latest edition includes a detailed look by Charles Horsey at the locomotives supplied by Vickers to London's Metropolitan Railway.
There is also an article by Mike Peascod on the Barrow-based locomotive Furness Railway Number 27 which was built in 1866.
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