ONLY a lack of cash and the protests of a few pioneering environmentalists prevented the heart of the Lake District becoming a patchwork of competing Victorian railway lines.

The ambitious schemes - and what became of them - were explored in a talk by Dick Smith called "The Isolation of the Windermere Line" at the spring meeting of the Cumbrian Railways Association.

Speaking at Carus Green Golf Club, near Kendal, he said November 1845 saw the entire front page of the Kendal Mercury devoted to propsed new railways.

One of the planned new routes was the Furness and Windermere Railway, which would have started from Ulverston.

He said: "It was a very serious project."

Civil engineers Harrison and Bintley drew up plans for two possible routes through Ulverston - hoping to link up with coastal trade drawn to the town by its existing canal.

At Backbarrow, the rail lines would have passed close to the ironworks because the railway promoters saw freight as being far more important than passengers.

The route kept close to the Gummer's How road at the side of the lake after Newby Bridge and planned a junction with the Kendal and Windermere Railway at Windermere station.

Other possible transport developments included what would have been the Langdale and Windermere Tramway.

Plans were drawn up by 1868 by engineer James Brunlees to provide rail transport for the Elterwater gunpowder works and slate quarries and reach Ambleside at the top of the lake, by the Roman fort.

He said: "It came to nothing."

Those who wanted the Lake District to be a place for quiet reflection on the wonders of nature were quick to rise to the new transport challenges.

There were letters written to The Times and pamphlets distributed.

In 1875 Robert Somervell, of Widermere - son of the K-Shoes founder - issued a petition with his pamphlet against an extension of rail links to Ambleside and Hawkshead.

He got support from prominent Victorian thinker John Ruskin, of Brantwood, Coniston.

Ruskin visited many places but wasn't so keen on the working classes doing the same.

He wrote: "The stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied like cols from a sack at Windermere and Keswick."

In the 1880s, a proposed Windermere to Ambleside rail link was described as "Vandalism in the Lake District."

A letter to The Times in February 1887 said: "There is national interest in what is going on."

It claimed that the only people who would benefit from the railway were contractors, land owners and hotel keepers.

Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley of Allen Bank, Grasmere, was a Lakeland rail opponent.

Mr Smith said: "He was very influential and he started the Lake District Defence Society."

The station at Ambleside would have been close to Stock Ghyll and it was claimed that: "Irreparable injury would be inflicted."

The Windermere to Ambleside venture was not suggested by an existing railway company but by local promoters.

Mr Smith said: "In the end this was not built, largely because the promoters were nt railway people."

They couldn't get the Midland, Furness or London and North Western Railway Company to invest in the scheme.