ABSTRACT
Carlisle was the county town of Cumberland and a cathedral city. Accordingly, it was still a centre of some significance in both secular and religious administration as well as being a long established regional market. Pelling observed that, along with Durham and Newcastle, Carlisle was one of 'the three oldest and most important administrative centres of the North of England,.1 It had also had a military significance in the past due to its proximity to the Scottish border; It still had an important commercial role as the centre of western communications for the north of England and the borders. In the nineteenth century these advantages of location had been put to new use when Carlisle became a centre for both railway communications and the railway industry. The Carlisle Guide of 1881 emphasised the importance of the railways to the success and economic health of the borough:
There are few towns which have more largely shared in· the national prosperity resulting from the development of the railway system than Carlisle ... Railways gave the impetus to these strides of prosperity, which have gone on contemporaneously with the prosperity of the system that called them into existence. Carlisle is now the greatest centre of railway communication. East, West, North, South, the iron roads radiate from it. It is placed on two of the three great trunk lines which run from one end of the kingdom to the other, and has a short and easy access to the eastern and western seas?
