A TOUR in pictures through the railways of Barrow featured at the last meeting of the Lakes and Lune branch of the Railway Correspondence and Travel Society.

Guest speaker was Barrow’s Geoff Holme at the Station Hotel, Carnforth with the topic of “The Furness Railway in and around Barrow”.

The pictures he showed by Michael Andrews helped capture a largely lost world of railway activity at places such as Barrow Island and through the town’s docklands and iron industry sites.

Striking pictures included a sea of empty wagons on what is now the Morrisons site and rail tracks for Vickers passing on both sides of the Crows Nest pub on Barrow Island

Mr Holme said: “He liked to take his pictures where nobody else bothered.”

Mr Andrews, who lived from 1932 to 2010, was a life-long railway enthusiast and documented in pictures and detailed research the development – and eventual closure – of many aspects of the old Furness Railway complex of lines and stations.

The Barrow man trained as a doctor and later became the medical officer for British Railways before retiring in 1992.

His research was drawn together by friends after his death and published in 2012 as The Furness Railway, A History by Barrai Books.

Mr Holme said: “The Furness Railway was never conceived as a mainline from Carnforth to Whitehaven but as a local line.”

From 1846 it brought Kirkby slate and Lindal iron ore to the coast, with Staffordshire and South Wales being keen buyers of ore for the iron furnaces.

Barrow’s original station was at the St George’s Road end of town – rather than the later central station, off Abbey Road, which travellers are familiar with.

It began as a basic wooden station, later rebuilt in stone.

Later extensions took the railway to the town’s iron and steelworks and on to Hawcoat Quarry.

The development of the Barrow dock system from 1867 prompted more rail laying and links were made with mines at Stank.

Mr Holme’s talk also featured two tours by pictures made from the Barrow shipyard station at Island Road to Lindal and from the outskirts of Askam, through Central Station at Barrow for the Piel branch.

The Barrow Island station had workmen’s trains linking with Grange and Silecroft.

It had opened around 1900 and was extended in 1915.

That station has now gone, along with the branch line through Rampside to Roa Island.

Roa Island was once a busy place for freight shipments and ferry links but the line was closed in 1936 and the tracks lifted.